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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.
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.
Interest in the work of Eliza Haywood has increased greatly over the last two decades. Though much scholarship is focused on her ‘scandalous’ early career, this critical edition of The Invisible Spy (1755) adds to the canon of her later, more sophisticated work.
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.
Eliza Haywood was one of the most popular and versatile writers of the eighteenth century. The two novellas in this edition – The Rash Resolve (1724) and Life’s Progress (1748) – show her developing and adapting her ideas on the subject of passion and romance. Though superficially presented as cautionary tales, Haywood introduces a feminist slant.
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.
This volume in this exciting new series provides a detailed yet accessible study of Gothic literature in the nineteenth century. It examines how themes and trends associated with the early Gothic novels were diffused widely in many different genres in the Victorian period, including the ghost story, the detective story and the adventure story. It looks in particular how the Gothic attempted to resolve the psychological and theological problems thrown up the modernisation and secularisation of British society. The author argues that the fetishized figure of the child came to stand for what many believed was being lost by the headlong rush into a technological and industrial future. The relationship between the child and horror is examined, and the book demonstrates that far from a simple rejection or acceptance of secularisation, the Gothic attempts to articulate an entirely different way of being modern.
Elizabeth Ham's 1845 novel, The Ford Family in Ireland, provides a snapshot, based on the personal experiences of the author, of a pivotal period in that country’s history. It examines the state of Ireland following the failed rebellions of 1798 and 1803 with a focus on the uprising of the “Thrashers,” an agrarian society in Ireland, and their putting down by martial law. Such movements attempted to avenge the wrongs which they perceived were being carried out against the natives of Ireland by landowners and the English government. This rare novel, alongside extensive editorial commentary, will be of much interest to students of literature and Irish history.
Ann Gomersall’s The Citizen (1790) is an epistolary novel, written over two volumes. Gomersall came out of the merchant class in Leeds and little else is known about her, but she began writing to raise funds for her merchant husband to re-enter business after he lost his money. This is the first modern critical edition of Gomersall’s work.
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.