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Self-Control (1811) was a literary sensation, going into four editions in its first year. The first novelist to set her story against a strong Scottish background, Brunton set the scene for other writers such as Walter Scott. Jane Austen was also a fan, she read it at least twice, worrying that the work might foreshadow her own creations.
Published in 1763, The History of Lady Julia Mandeville was Frances Brooke’s first and most successful novel. This modern critical edition contains an introductory essay on the text, endnotes and textual variants as well as appendices containing contemporary reviews and some of Brooke’s other writing.
Throughout the 250 years that have passed since Thomas Gray’s death, he has primarily been celebrated as a poet. This makes sense because, although he published relatively little verse, he published less – indeed, precisely nothing – of his abundant polymathic writing in other fields. His place within the history of scholarship has therefore been obscured. Like many eighteenth-century antiquaries, however, he shared his learning through correspondence and manuscript circulation and thereby influenced intellectual as well as literary life. This book explores Gray’s scholarship within the changing norms of eighteenth-century disciplines, at once locating him within histories of specialisation and examining the ways in which he challenges their narratives. Scholars from across the humanities reveal his methods and global interests and analyse many newly uncovered manuscripts. Offering fresh understanding of broader fields through focused investigation of Gray’s multidisciplinary writings, the book will appeal to scholars of eighteenth-century literary, intellectual, and scientific history.
Thomas Holcroft’s 1786 translation of Isabelle de Montolieu’s novel is a textual encounter between a rather conventional Swiss woman and a British radical. Just as Montolieu did in her own translations, Holcroft reworked parts of the novel to make it more appealing to his intended audience.
Family Annals, or the Sisters, Mary Hays's last novel, was originally published in 1817. This philosophically complex novel examines the themes of the importance of women's education, economic equality of the sexes, and general equality among all human beings. This edition of Family Annals, with a new introduction and editorial commentary by Li-ching Chen, will be of interest to scholars and students of the writing of the Romantic and Victorian eras. It will contribute to various debates about women's education in the nineteenth century, and will provide a new avenue of research in women's writing.
Christian Isobel Johnstone’s Clan-Albin: A National Tale was published in 1815, less than a year after Walter Scott’s Waverley; or ‘tis Sixty Years Since enthralled readers and initiated a craze for Scottish novels. Both as a novelist and as editor of Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine from 1834 to 1846, Johnstone was a powerful figure in Romantic Edinburgh’s literary scene. But her works and her reputation have long been overshadowed by Scott’s. In Clan-Albin, Johnstone engages with themes on British imperial expansion, metropolitan England’s economic and political relationships with the Celtic peripheries, and the role of women in public life. This rare novel, alongside extensive editorial commentary, will be of much interest to students of British Literature.
Born in Dublin into the Anglo-Irish gentry, Anna Maria Hall moved to London when she was fifteen where she became famous for her books, plays and travel writing. It was her book, Sketches of Irish Character (1829) which made her a household name. This modern critical edition is based on Hall's third, revised edition of 1844.
Often linked to the works of early Romanticism, Sophie Cottin's Malvina (1803) was a bestselling sentimental novel. First published in France, the English translation by Elizabeth Gunning – a prolific novelist in her own right – allowed Cottin’s book to achieve success internationally. This is the first modern scholarly edition of Malvina.
This edition connects four female writers from two different countries, presenting the English translations of two of the most popular eighteenth-century French novels and a sequel to one of them.
This new edition of the British epistolary novel The History of Lady Louisa Stroud, and the Honourable Miss Caroline Stretton examines the theme of female agency, and is an excellent example of women's writing in the eighteenth-century. The relationships of the author, Phebe Gibbes, with the East India Company, The London Magazine, ‘The Benevolent Society’, and the Royal Literary Society provide rich avenues for research. Accompanied by a new introduction and editorial commentary, this text will be of great interest to students of literary history and women's writing.