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Chapbooks formed the staple reading matter of ordinary people during the 18th and much of the 19th centuries. These chapbooks derive from romances which were current in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance.
Eighteenth-century literature displays a fascination with the seduction of a virtuous young heroine, most famously illustrated by Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and repeated in 1790s radical women's novels, in the many memoirs by fictional or real penitent prostitutes, and in street print. Across fiction, ballads, essays and miscellanies, stories were told of women's mistaken belief in their lovers' vows. In this book Katherine Binhammer surveys seduction narratives from the late eighteenth century within the context of the new ideal of marriage-for-love and shows how these tales tell varying stories of women's emotional and sexual lives. Drawing on new historicism, feminism, and narrative theory, Binhammer argues that the seduction narrative allowed writers to explore different fates for the heroine than the domesticity that became the dominant form in later literature. This study will appeal to scholars of eighteenth-century literature, social and cultural history, and women's and gender studies.
Romance is a varied and fluid literary genre, notoriously difficult to define. This groundbreaking Companion surveys the many permutations of romance throughout the ages. Considers the literary and historical development of the romance genre from its classical origins to the present day Incorporates discussion of the changing readership of romance and of romance’s special relation to women readers Comprises 30 essays written by leading authorities on different periods and sub-genres Challenges the idea that the appeal of romance is exclusively escapist Draws on a wide range of specific and influential literary examples
Stories of True Crime in Tudor and Stuart England is an original collection of thirty stories of true crime during the period 1580-1700. Published in short books known as chapbooks, these stories proliferated in early modern popular literature. The chapbooks included in this collection describe serious, horrifying and often deeply personal stories of murder and attempted murder, infanticide, suicide, rape, arson, highway robbery, petty treason and witchcraft. These criminal cases reveal the fascinating complexities of early modern English society. The vivid depictions of these stories were used by the English church and state to describe the proper boundaries of behaviour, and the dangers th...