Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 Books

Book SynopsisRecent developments in linguistic theory offer scholars new tools for understanding poems. This text reviews poetic texts which respond well to analysis from a particular stylistic perspective. Works by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Frost, Shelley and Tennyson are among those analysed.

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Book SynopsisExamines the literary output of American writers - major and minor - who treated the Civil War in their works. The author seeks to understand why this devastating and defining military conflict has failed to produce more literature of a notably high and lasting order.

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Book SynopsisContains essays on the roles played by women in forming American attitudes about benevolence and poverty relief. This book talks about: images of the sentimental seamstress figure in women's fiction; Rebecca Harding Davis's rewriting of the industrial novel; the philanthropic work and writings of Hull House founder, Jane Addams; and more.

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Trade Review[The] discussions of Twain, Howells, Chesnutt, and Johnson... lucidly illustrate the ways that four of our major writers struggled to create literary forms enabling them not only to reflect but also to intervene in contemporary racial debates, and in the process to begin shifting the generic boundaries of American literature. - American Literary Realism ""[A Question of Character] fills in significant gaps in the critical discourse about genre, race, and science at the turn of the century.... [The] introduction and first chapter are extremely useful for explicating how racial discourse in realism and sentimentalism helps determine genre.... [This book] should be required reading for scholars interested in early theories about scientific racism."" - Choice ""Richly informed and theoretically astute."" - American Quarterly

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Book SynopsisAn innovative exploration of Emily Dickinson as a political poet. In this study, Paul Crumbley asserts that, contrary to popular opinion, Emily Dickinson consistently communicated political views through her poetry. Dickinsonâs life of self-isolation - today her most notable personal characteristic - by no means extended into the political sphere, he argues. While she rarely addressed political issues directly and was curiously disengaged from the liberal causes and female reform movements of her time, Dickinsonâs poems are deeply rooted both in matters of personal sovereignty and reader choice. The significant choices Dickinson extends to the reader underscore the democratic dimensions of reading her work, and of reading itself as a political act. Crumbley employs close readings of Dickinsonâs poems and letters, highlighting the many changing - and often contradictory - voices in her work, both throughout her oeuvre and in individual poems themselves. In Dickinsonâs letters Crumbl

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Book SynopsisBeginning with an examination of Willa Cather's Virginia childhood and the southern influences that continued to mold her during the Nebraska years, Joyce McDonald traces the effects of those influences in Cather's novels.Trade ReviewIn associating Cather with the past grandeur and defeat of the South and detecting in her fiction an undertone of historical irony, McDonald successfully places Cather in a larger world than the pioneering American one with which she has been identified."" - John J. Murphy, Brigham Young University""McDonald succeeds in establishing both the importance and the relevance of those formative years before the Nebraska experience that scholars have so emphasized for several decades. . . . The Stuff of Our Forebears is a readable, insightful addition to Cather scholarship."" - Bruce P. Baker II, University of NebraskaTable of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1. Cather's Southern Heritage and Pastoral Origins 2. Cather's New World Pastorals 3. The Pangs of Disillusionment: Cather's Antipastoral Subtext 4. For Their Own Good: Cather's Pastoral Histories 5. History and Memory: Cather's Garden of the Chattel Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisOur Lady of Victorian Feminism is about three nineteenth-century women (Jameson, Margaret Fuller, and George Eliot), Protestants by background and feminists by conviction, who are curiously and crucially linked by their extensive use of the Madonna in arguments designed to empower women.Trade Review“Adams’s pioneering work in nineteenth-century feminist theology puts her at the forefront of an expanding new field of scholarship.”

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Book SynopsisTracing the Victorian crisis over the representation of working-class women to the 1842 Parliamentary bluebook on mines, with its controversial images of women at work, Hidden Hands argues that the female industrial worker became even more dangerous to represent than the prostitute or the male radical because she exposed crucial contradictions between the class and gender ideologies of the period and its economic realities.Drawing on the recent work of feminist historians, Patricia Johnson lays the groundwork for a reinterpretation of Victorian social-problem fiction that highlights its treatment of issues that particularly affected working-class women: sexual harassment; the interconnections between domestic ideology and domestic violence; their relationships to male-dominated working-class movements such as Luddism, Chartism, and unionism; and their troubled connection to middle-class feminism.Uncovering a series of images in Victorian fiction ranging from hot-tempered

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Book SynopsisIn 1837, when Queen Victoria came to the throne, no institution of higher education in Britain was open to women. By the end of the century, a quiet revolution had occurred: women had penetrated even the venerable walls of Oxford and Cambridge and could earn degrees at the many new universities founded during Victoria's reign.Trade ReviewLaura Green's generous intelligence and literary sensibility mark every turn taken by these alert readings. Tracing the lines of stress shot through women's educational reform by both domestic ideology and liberal individualism, this study of Victorian fiction is itself an education. * editor of Victorian Studies *Educating Women offers insights into gender ideologies in Victorian England and into the specific ways they play out in important Victorian novels. Every page of this study offers something new to think about, and the study as a whole provides a new lens through which to view Victorian literature. * author of Dangerous by Degrees and The Diva's Mouth: Body, Voice, and Prima Donna Politics *

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Book SynopsisAmy Levy has risen to prominence in recent years as one of the most innovative and perplexing writers of her generation.Trade Review“This is a collection that will vastly enhance our understanding of Victorian culture, the nuances of Anglo-Jewish identity, the struggles of Victorian feminism, and the singular achievement of a writer whose complexity is finally coming into focus.”“This splendid collection of essays will contribute to the ongoing reassessment of Amy Levy as a complex and challenging writer…. (A) rich and complex portrait of a writer who … might just be representative rather than marginal, and who certainly complicated her own meditation on what it means to be a minor writer.” * Victorian Studies *“Thoughtful in selection and rigorous in scholarship, this volume introduces new readers to Levy’s life and works, refines and expands on the major themes of extant criticism, and considers entirely new ways of analyzing Levy’s work…. Amy Levy: Critical Essays is a powerful argument for the value of Amy Levy to our understanding of late Victorian literature.” * Nineteenth Century Gender Studies *“Collectively, these essays demonstrate that Levy was fully engaged in dominant discourses around politics, feminism, aesthetics and Jewish identity of her day. For undergraduates and advanced scholars of Levy's work and historical moment, therefore, this volume will prove an invaluable resource.” * New Books on Literature 19 *“Eschewing tragic readings of Levy’s life—she committed suicide at 28—these uniformly strong essays locate Levy in such contexts as late-Victorian feminism, discourses of female professionalism, and evengelicalism. The essays cover the full range of Levy’s work…. Highly recommended.” * Choice *“A great strength of this volume, and the reason why it deserves to find an audience beyond scholars who specialize in Levy’s work, is the care the contributors take to bring the broader historical context into their discussion.” * Shofar Book Reviews *

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Book SynopsisA new historical approach to Indian English literature Mary Ellis Gibson shows that poetry, not fiction, was the dominant literary genre of Indian writing in English until 1860 and that poetry written in colonial situations can tell us as much or even more about figuration, multilingual literacies, and histories of nationalism than novels can. Gibson re-creates the historical webs of affiliation and resistance that were experienced by writers in colonial Indiawriters of British, Indian, and mixed ethnicities.Advancing new theoretical and historical paradigms for reading colonial literatures, Indian Angles makes accessible many writers heretofore neglected or virtually unknown. Gibson recovers texts by British women, by nonelite British men, and by persons who would, in the nineteenth century, have been called Eurasian. Her work traces the mutually constitutive history of English-language poets from Sir William Jones to Toru Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore. Drawing onTrade Review“This is genuinely groundbreaking work: ambitiously conceived, suggestively presented, and potentially paradigm-shifting.” -- Tricia Lootens, author of Lost Saints: Silence, Gender, and Victorian Literary Canonization“Indian Angles showcases and reflects the vibrant poetry culture of India in the nineteenth century and therein lies its contribution to the scholarship of that period.” * Victorian Studies *“Both of Gibson’s books (Indian Angles and Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India) stand as shining examples of the strategic comparativist work needed to assess the full array of literary voices in/on India during the long nineteenth century.” * English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920 *“In this thoroughly researched, well-theorized study, Gibson traces the rise of English-language poetics in India from the late 18th century to the early 20th. She acknowledges the complex, changing identity politics informing colonial affiliation, showing how poets of British, Indian, or mixed origin and affiliation were involved in the complementary project of establishing Anglo-Indian poetics…. Summing Up: Highly recommended.” * Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries *”Asserting that poetry—rather than prose fiction—dominated English-language writing in India for most of the nineteenth century, Indian Angles examines ‘the rise and expansion of English language poetics in India,‘….” * Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 *

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Book SynopsisIn Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing eminent Rossetti scholar Lorraine Janzen Kooistra demonstrates the cultural centrality of a neglected artifact: the Victorian illustrated gift book. Turning a critical lens on drawing-room books as both material objects and historical events, Kooistra reveals how the gift book's visual/verbal form mediated high and popular art as well as book and periodical publication.A composite text produced by many makers, the poetic gift book was designed for domestic space and a female audience; its mode of publication marks a significant moment in the history of authorship, reading, and publishing. With rigorous attention to the gift book's aesthetic and ideological features, Kooistra analyzes the contributions of poets, artists, engravers, publishers, and readers and shows how its material form moved poetry into popular culture. Drawing on archival and periodical research, she offers new readings of Eliza Cook, Adelaide Procter, and Jean IngeTrade Review“Janzen Kooistra makes a superb contribution to the literature on the history of the book…. This volume itself is a beautiful artifact, generously illustrated with examples of gift-book engravings, often displaying the entire printed page in order to display the interplay between text and illustration. Summing Up: Highly recommended.” * Choice *“Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing is an important book that identifies a fertile area for future study. Kooistra provides consistently acute analysis on the commodification of poetry, the impact that this had on author-publisher relationships, and the interaction between material and literary culture. This is a mature piece of scholarship that shows a profound grasp of the subject and the related methodological and theoretical implications.” * Tennyson Research Bulletin *“A model of lucid analysis and a valuable addition to the understanding of nineteenth-century book production and consumer culture.” * Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 *“Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing is the third and perhaps the best in a series of monographs in which Lorraine Janzen Kooistra has explored the ways in which the material forms of Victorian illustrated books produced meanings and audiences…. Her new book amounts to nothing less than a critical inquiry into the place of poetry in the modern world.” * Victorian Studies *“Kooistra persuasively argues that in the 1860s, the illustrated book of poetry became one of the most important literary commodities of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. With great clarity and depth, she articulates the central relevance of ornamental, illustrated poetic gift books to literary culture, British identity, and the place of poetry in histories of authorship, reading, and publishing…. There is nothing stale about her contribution to book history studies.” * Review 19 *“[A]n important contribution to Victorian studies, as well as to the fields of visual and material culture, popular literacy, and book history … confirming [Lorraine Janzen Kooistra] as the leading authority on Victorian illustrated books of poetry.” * The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies *“Janzen Kooistra writes with formidable insight into the vast, intermingled range of…influences—artists, engravers, businessmen, and consumers—upon 1860s gift-book production…. Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing does much to recapture the dual importance of the gift book as commercial and cultural object.” * Victorian Periodicals Review *“Thoroughly researched and lucidly argued, Kooistra’s study makes a convincing case for the centrality of the gift book to understanding Victorian poetry, illustration, book production, and consumer culture.” * author of Framed: The New Woman Criminal in British Culture at the Fin de Siècle *“Over five lavishly illustrated chapters…Kooistra presents case studies of individual texts, including many examples from Tennyson, and illuminates different phases of production, from commissioning and marketing to illustrating and to facsimile engraving.” * Victorian Poetry *

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Book SynopsisIn the early 1800s, books were largely unillustrated. By the 1830s and 1840s, however, innovations in wood- and steel-engraving techniques changed how Victorian readers consumed and conceptualized fiction. A new type of novel was born, often published in serial form, one that melded text and image as partners in meaning-making.These illustrated serial novels offered Victorians a reading experience that was both verbal and visual, based on complex effects of flash-forward and flashback as the placement of illustrations revealed or recalled significant story elements. Victorians' experience of what are now canonical novels thus differed markedly from that of modern readers, who are accustomed to reading single volumes with minimal illustration. Even if modern editions do reproduce illustrations, these do not appear as originally laid out. Modern readers therefore lose a crucial aspect of how Victorians understood plotas a story delivered in both words and images, over time, and Trade Review“Leighton and Surridge do a magnificent job of illuminating the surprisingly important role of illustrations in serial fiction and challenging some of the assumptions that have dominated scholarly understanding of the serial novel. Building on a rich and growing body of scholarship on serial fiction, The Plot Thickens shows that attending to illustrations has the potential to transform our understanding of how Victorian readers consumed novels in parts.”“This impressive study will undoubtedly shape the way Victorian studies scholars frame the topic of reading practices going forward, whether approaching it from the perspective of book history, art history, or literary studies.” * Victorian Periodicals Review *

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Book SynopsisIn analyzing depictions of Australian convicts in novels, broadsides, and first-person accounts, Dorice Williams Elliott demonstrates how Britain linked class, race, and national identity at a key historical moment when it was still negotiating its relationship with its empire.Trade Review“In this nuanced study of literature by and about convicts in the nineteenth century, Dorice Williams Elliott makes a major contribution to the fields of Victorian studies and Australian literature. She paints a vivid and fascinating picture of convict life and how it was perceived in Australia and Britain that will be useful to academics, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates.”“By bringing Australian and British literary treatments of convict transportation into one frame, Transported to Botany Bay invigorates the burgeoning scholarship on the transnational dimensions of Victorian literature. Elliott ranges far beyond the usual texts that dominate the discussion of Australia in Victorian studies, most notably in juxtaposing novelistic treatments with the corpus of transportation broadsides, thus helpfully broadening our critical horizons.”

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Book SynopsisIn Collaborative Dickens, Melisa Klimaszewski undertakes the first comprehensive study of Dickens’s Christmas numbers. She argues for a revised understanding of Dickens as an editor who, rather than ceaselessly bullying his contributors, sometimes accommodated contrary views and depended upon multivocal narratives for his own success.Trade Review“This is a mature and original piece of scholarship that adds substantially to the critical understanding of Dickens and is the first comprehensive overview of his Christmas numbers. Considering each number as its own aesthetic unit, Klimaszewski convincingly argues for a different and more flexible understanding of authorship (and of “Dickens”) as polyvocal, often contradictory, and conversational in nature. Her discussion of Dickens’s collaborations with Wilkie Collins is particularly strong.”“Collaborative Dickens is a new and distinct contribution that will be of substantial interest to Dickens scholars, to those working more broadly on Victorian studies, to researchers focused on the periodical press, and to scholars examining models of collaborative authorship.”“Melisa Klimaszewski masterfully guides the reader through the Christmas numbers Charles Dickens edited for Household Words and All the Year Round—eighteen in total from 1850 to 1867, with forty writers represented—making a compelling case for a re-evaluation of collaborative writing and academic approaches to it, whether in the case of Dickens, the Victorians, or more broadly.” * British Association for Victorian Studies Newsletter 22.2 (Summer 2022) *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The journal American Literature was founded in 1929 and since that time has regularly published important articles on the study of literature in the United States. Many of the articles that appeared in the journal have, in fact, become the ‘standard view’ or ‘the final word’ on a particular literary subject. . . . The series will be an important acquisition for every college library." - ChoiceTable of ContentsSeries Introduction vii The Literary Background of Howells's Social Criticism (1942) / George Arms 1 A Note on Howells and "The Smiling Aspects of Life" (1945) / Edwin H. Cady 18 Materials and Form in Howells's First Novels (1947) / William M. Gibson 21 The Equalitarian Principle in the Fiction of William Dean Howells (1952) / William F. Ekstrom 30 Howells, The Atlantic Monthly, and Republicanism (1952) / Louis J. Budd 41 William Dean Howells, Ed Howe, and The Story of a Country Town (1958) / James B. Stronks 59 The Ethical Unity of The Rise of Silas Lapham (1960) / Donald Pizer 65 Point of View in Howells's The Landlord at Lion's Head (1962) / William McMurray 71 Marcia Gaylord's Electra Complex: A Footnote to Sex in Howells (1962) / Kermit Vanderbilt 79 The Function of Setting in Howells's The Landlord at Lion's Head (1963) / Mary S. Sulivan 89 The Architecture of The Rise of Silas Lapham (1966) / G. Thomas Tanselle 104 Howells and Ade (1966) / Jack Brenner 132 The Dark Side of Their Wedding Journey (1969) / Marion W. Cumpiano 142 William Dean Howells. George William Curtis, and the "Haymarker Affair" (1969) / Clara and Rudolf Kirk 157 Savagery and Civilization: The Moral Dimensions of Howells's A Boy's Town (1969) / Tom H. Towers 169 Transformations: The Blithedale Romance to Howells and James (1976) / Robert Emmet Long 180 The Wilderness Within: Howells's A Boy's Town (1976) / Thomas Cooley 200 Invalids and Actresses: Howells's Duplex Imagery for American Women (1976) / Sidney H. Bremer 216 William Dean Howells and Charles W. Chestnut: Criticism and Race Fiction in the Age of Booker T. Washington (1976) / William L. Andrews 232 Howells's Oresteia: The Union of Theme and Structure in The Shadow of a Dream (1977) / Barbara L. Parker 245 An Interoceanic Episode: THe Lady of thte Aroostook (1977) / John W. Crowley 258 Index 270

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Book SynopsisD. R. Howland explores China’s representations of Japan in the changing world of the late nineteenth century and, in so doing, examines the cultural and social borders between the two neighbors. Looking at Chinese accounts of Japan written during the 1870s and 1880s, he undertakes an unprecedented analysis of the main genres the Chinese used to portray Japan—the travel diary, poetry, and the geographical treatise. In his discussion of the practice of “brushtalk,” in which Chinese scholars communicated with the Japanese by exchanging ideographs, Howland further shows how the Chinese viewed the communication of their language and its dominant modes—history and poetry—as the textual and cultural basis of a shared civilization between the two societies. With Japan’s decision in the 1870s to modernize and westernize, China’s relationship with Japan underwent a crucial change—one that resulted in its decisive separation from ChinTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Note ix Introduction 1 I. Encountering Japan 9 1. Civilization from the Center: The Geomoral Context of Tributary Expectations 11 Civilization and Proximity 13 The Bounds of Diplomatic Protocol 15 Japan in the Qing Record 18 An Aside: The Aborted Legacy of the Ming 26 The Matter of International Treaties 28 The Decision to Grant Japan a Treaty (1870) 31 Japanese Incident/Dwarf Intrusion (1874) 35 2. Civilization as Universal Practice: The Context of Writing and Poetry 43 Brushtalking 43 The Written Code: Hanwen/Kanbun 45 The Play of the Code 48 Tong Wen: Shared Writing/Shared Civilization 54 Playing the Code: Occasional Poetry 57 Celebrating Tong Wen: Poetry and History 62 The Value of Civilization in Japan 65 II. Representing Japan 69 Prologue: Geographical Knowledge 71 3. Journeys to the East: The Geography of Historical Sites and Self in the Travelogue 80 Images of the East 81 Recovering History through Geographical Sites 86 Travel Accounts 92 4. The Historiographical Use of Poetry 108 The Poems on Divers Japanese Affairs 110 The Epistemological Basis of the Poetry-History Homology 119 Poetry and Geography 129 Evidential Research 135 5. The Utility of Objectification in the Geographic Treatise 157 The Decade of Geographic Treatises on Japan 158 The Local Treatise as a Model 164 Utility as Means and End 173 Strategies of Objectification 176 III. Representing Japan's Westernization 195 6. Negotiating Civilization and Westernization 197 Analogy and Containment 200 The Precedence of Learning before Action 201 Western Learning and Western Ways 203 Alternative Approaches to World Order 222 Afterword 242 Notes 251 Bibliography 303 Glossary 323 Index 333

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Book SynopsisOffers an innovative interpretation of the role that gender played in defining the Indian state during both the colonial and postcolonial eras. This book examines representations of "native" Indian women and shows how these representations were deployed to advance notions of Indian self-rule as well as to defend British imperialism.Trade Review“En-Gendering India is a lucid and intelligent study of the play of gender and sexuality in Indian nationalism. Sangeeta Ray cautions against the perception that Hindu nationalism is no longer relevant in an era of globalization and migration, arguing that it has simply entered a more expansive phase. This is an important and timely book.”—Jennifer Sharpe, University of California, Los Angeles"A significant contribution to postcolonial and feminist studies. Ray’s scholarship is rigorous and persuasive, combining theoretical depth and erudition with original and nuanced textual analysis and interpretation."—Rajagopolan Radhakrishnan, University of MassachusettsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Gender and Nation: Woman Warriors in Chatterjee’s Devi Chaudhurani and Anandamath 2. Woman as “Suttee”: The Construction of India in Three Victorian Narratives 3. Woman as Nation and a Nation of Women: Tagore’s The Home and the World and Hosain’s Sultana’s Dream 4. New Woman, New Nations: Writing the Partition in Desai’s Clear Light of Day and Sidhwa’s Cracking India Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisAnalyses how Victorians used the pathology of disease to express deep-seated anxieties about a rapidly industrialising England's relationship to the material world. Drawing on medicine, literature, political economy, sociology, anthropology, and popular advertising, the author explores the industrial logic of disease.Trade Review“Raw Material adds much to the existing literature on the Victorians. With its enlightening case studies and its author’s solid understanding of the state of medical art in the latter half of the nineteenth century, this is a first-rate piece of work.”—Sander L. Gilman, author of Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul: Race and Psychology in the Shaping of Aesthetic Surgery“Industry makes it possible to understand the Victorian body, according to Erin O'Connor, as so much raw material. O'Connor's mind is a pleasure to watch at work and Raw Material will make a significant contribution to Victorian studies, to work on the body, and to cultural studies.”—Mary Ann O'Farrell, author of Telling Complexions: The Nineteenth-Century English Novel and the Blush“The body in distress and deformation—black from cholera, excrescent from breast cancer, monstrous, and repaired through prosthesis—offers a prism through which O’Connor refracts the crisis of the self in the world’s first industrial society. This is a complex, empirically rich, reflective and vigorously argued book that will be welcomed by literary critics, by historians of the body and of the nineteenth century, and by anyone engaged with cultural theory.”—Thomas Laqueur, author of Making Sex : Body and Gender from the Greeks to FreudTable of ContentsList of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 ONE/ Asiatic Cholera and the Raw Material of Race 21 TWO/ Breast Reductions 60 THREE/ Fractions of Men: Engendering Amputation 102 FOUR/ Monsters. Materials, Methods 148 AFTERWORD/ The Promises of Monsters, or, A Manifesto for Academic Futures 209 Notes 219 Works Cited 251 Index 267

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Book SynopsisIn 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, a middle class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly. Local, national, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamoured to cover the ensuing "girl lovers" murder trial.Trade Review“A book to die for! Theoretically sophisticated, yet written with clarity and elegance, Sapphic Slashers opens whole new worlds of understanding about sexuality, gender norms, racial injustice, violence, and the complex ways they are connected. Full of passion and intelligence, it made me think in fresh new ways about issues of great importance. Duggan’s is an amazing intellect.”—John D’Emilio, coauthor of Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America“Duggan seamlessly combines cultural theory with analyses of material conditions and demonstrates a breathtaking command of American cultural institutions—the mass press, the judicial systems, the medical literature. The book is not only smart about the interconnections between gender, sex, race, class, and nation, but is also lucid, making a good read.”—Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, author of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community“In this stunningly coherent and compelling account of the development of ‘American modernity,’ Duggan captures our interest with the sensational tale of lesbian love murder but then insists that we read this tale through turn-of-the-century debates over racial violence and against the backdrop of the medicalization of homosexuality. Sapphic Slashers has ‘classic’ written all over it.”—Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity“What Duggan does in this original and moving book is take a murder case from 1890’s Memphis and make of it a prism through which to illuminate American modernity. Her method depends less on an account of the murder or of the judicial procedure that followed it than on an analysis of the many narratives—of lesbian love and sex and madness—that the case occasioned. Juxtaposing these narratives to narratives of lynching, Duggan produces a tour-de-force of historical understanding.”—Henry Abelove, Wesleyan UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I Murder in Memphis 1. Girl Slays Girl 9 2. A Feast of Sensation 32 3. Habeas Corpus 61 4. Inquisition of Lunacy 87 Part II Making Meanings 5. Violent Passions 123 6. Doctors of Desire 156 7. A Thousand Stories 180 More Than Love: An Epilogue 193 Appendix A: Hypothetical Case 201 Appendix B: Letters 213 Notes 233 Bibliography 281 Index 299

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Book SynopsisIn 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, a middle class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly. Local, national, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamoured to cover the ensuing "girl lovers" murder trial.Trade Review“A book to die for! Theoretically sophisticated, yet written with clarity and elegance, Sapphic Slashers opens whole new worlds of understanding about sexuality, gender norms, racial injustice, violence, and the complex ways they are connected. Full of passion and intelligence, it made me think in fresh new ways about issues of great importance. Duggan’s is an amazing intellect.”—John D’Emilio, coauthor of Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America“Duggan seamlessly combines cultural theory with analyses of material conditions and demonstrates a breathtaking command of American cultural institutions—the mass press, the judicial systems, the medical literature. The book is not only smart about the interconnections between gender, sex, race, class, and nation, but is also lucid, making a good read.”—Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, author of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community“In this stunningly coherent and compelling account of the development of ‘American modernity,’ Duggan captures our interest with the sensational tale of lesbian love murder but then insists that we read this tale through turn-of-the-century debates over racial violence and against the backdrop of the medicalization of homosexuality. Sapphic Slashers has ‘classic’ written all over it.”—Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity“What Duggan does in this original and moving book is take a murder case from 1890’s Memphis and make of it a prism through which to illuminate American modernity. Her method depends less on an account of the murder or of the judicial procedure that followed it than on an analysis of the many narratives—of lesbian love and sex and madness—that the case occasioned. Juxtaposing these narratives to narratives of lynching, Duggan produces a tour-de-force of historical understanding.”—Henry Abelove, Wesleyan UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I Murder in Memphis 1. Girl Slays Girl 9 2. A Feast of Sensation 32 3. Habeas Corpus 61 4. Inquisition of Lunacy 87 Part II Making Meanings 5. Violent Passions 123 6. Doctors of Desire 156 7. A Thousand Stories 180 More Than Love: An Epilogue 193 Appendix A: Hypothetical Case 201 Appendix B: Letters 213 Notes 233 Bibliography 281 Index 299

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Book SynopsisDrawing on a wide array of literary, scientific, and popular works of the period, this book focuses on the importance of scientific knowledge and its impact on Victorian culture. It presents a social, cultural, and literary history of this knowledge industry and traces its relationships within nineteenth-century literature.Trade Review“Useful Knowledge can stand as a model of informed and scrupulous historicism. The breadth of Rauch’s acquaintance with subliterary and paraliterary texts is truly impressive as he clearly lays out what was at stake for nineteenth-century intellectuals and usefully relates their preoccupations with those that concern us now, as we experience another information revolution.”—Harriet Ritvo, author of The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination “A welcome addition to humanistic analyses of science-in-culture. Rauch deftly blends science, history, and literature—novels, speculative fiction, encyclopedias—to explore cultural attitudes to the challenges of new knowledge during the Information Age of the early nineteenth century.”—Ann B. Shteir, York UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Knowledge and the Novel 1. Food for Thought: The Dissemination of Knowledge in the Early Nineteenth Century 2. Science in the Popular Novel: Jane Webb Loudon’s The Mummy! 3. The Monstrous Body of Knowledge: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 4. Lessons Learned in Class: Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor 5. The Tailor Transformed: Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke 6. Destiny as an Unmapped River: George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSarah Robbins identifies and defines a new genre in American letters—the domestic literacy narrative—and provides a cultural history of its development throughout the nineteenth century. Winner of an Outstanding Academic Title Award from Choice Magazine (2006).

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Book SynopsisThis book offers a monograph on the work of the Armenian poet Daniel Varuzhan (1884-1915), preceded by a general account of how Armenian national philology unfolded in the 19th century, under the influence of European orientalist philology and its two main inventions: the native and mythological religion.Trade Review"Marc Nichanian gives us the most extensive account of philology to date - by which I mean that he calls it to account as no one else has as of yet. He identifies philology as the foundational discourse that, hardly limited to the academy, instituted the "order of things" within which we live and think still. Philology's role was memorably traced by Foucault, while Edward Said crucially implicated it in the history of colonial rule. Nichanian expands on both, and he does so by restoring religion to its place. More important, whereas Foucault and Said saw literature as the site of a possible breach of philology's hold, Nichanian demonstrates the more complex, indeed, essential link between the aesthetic and the religious. Finally, by placing mourning at the center of these distinct discursive spheres, Nichanian brings together the emerging discourses and practices of "art, religion and philology," archaeology, ethnography and literature, nationalism and colonialism. He thereby recasts our entire understanding of modernity as the impossibility of mourning. This extraordinary book, subtly argued, wonderfully organized, and impeccably translated, will no doubt appeal to scholars of literature, philosophy and religion." -- -Gil Anidjar Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsA Note on Transliteration Introduction. Art, Religion, and Philology (Translated by G. M. Goshgarian) Part I. "The Seal of Silence" (Translated by G. M. Goshgarian) 1. Variants and Facets of the Literary erection 2. Abovean and the Birth of the Native 3. Orientalism and Neo-archeology Part II. Daniel Varuzhan: The End of Religion (Translated by Jeff Fort) 4. The Disaster of the Native 5. The Other Scene of Representation 6. Erection and Self-Sacrifice 7. The Mourning of Religion I 8. The Mourning of Religion II Epilogue. Nietzsche in Armenian Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Translated by G. M. Goshgarian) Appendices: Translations 1. Philology and Ethnography in the Nineteenth Century (Translated by G. M. Goshgarian) 2. Constant Zarian: Essays in Mehyan and Other Writings (Translated by G. M. Goshgarian) 3. Daniel Varuzhan: Poems and Prose (Translated by G. M. Goshgarian, Nanor Kebranian, and Lena Takvorian) Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction. The Secularization of the Lyric: The End of Art, a Revolution in Poetic Language, and the Meaning of the Modern Crowd Part I: Edgar Allan Poe 1. Poe’s Post-Humanism 2. Poe and the Origins of Modern Poetry: Tropes of Comparison and the Knowledge of Loss Part II: Walt Whitman 3. Whitman’s Poetics: Metonymy and the Crowd 4. Whitman and Democracy: The “Withness of the World,” the Reader, and the Fakes of Death Part III: Emily Dickinson 5. Emily Dickinson: The Poet as Lyric Reader 6. Dickinson’s Dog and the Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisSecular Lyric interrogates the distinctively individual ways that Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson transformed classical, romantic, and early modern forms of lyric expression to address the developing conditions of Western modernity, especially the heterogeneity of believers and beliefs in an increasingly secular society. Analyzing historically and formally how these poets inscribed the pressures of the modern crowd in the text of their poems, John Michael shows how the masses appear in these poets' work as potential readers to be courted and resisted, often at the same time. Unlike their more conventional contemporaries, Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson resist advising, sermonizing or consoling their audiences. They resist most familiar senses of meaning as well. For them, the processes of signification in print rather than the communication of truths become central to poetry, which in turn becomes a characteristic of modern verse in the Western world. Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson, in idiosyTable of ContentsIntroduction. The Secularization of the Lyric: The End of Art, a Revolution in Poetic Language, and the Meaning of the Modern Crowd Part I: Edgar Allan Poe 1. Poe’s Post-Humanism 2. Poe and the Origins of Modern Poetry: Tropes of Comparison and the Knowledge of Loss Part II: Walt Whitman 3. Whitman’s Poetics: Metonymy and the Crowd 4. Whitman and Democracy: The “Withness of the World,” the Reader, and the Fakes of Death Part III: Emily Dickinson 5. Emily Dickinson: The Poet as Lyric Reader 6. Dickinson’s Dog and the Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction: Ecological Formalism; or, Love among the Ruins Nathan K. Hensley and Philip Steer, 1 Part I Method 1. Drama, Ecology, and the Ground of Empire: The Play of Indigo Sukanya Banerjee, 21 2. Mourning Species: In Memoriam in an Age of Extinction Jesse Oak Taylor, 42 3. Signatures of the Carboniferous: The Literary Forms of Coal Nathan K. Hensley and Philip Steer, 63 Part II Form 4. Fixed Capital and the Flow: Water Power, Steam Power, and The Mill on the Floss Elizabeth Carolyn Miller, 85 5. “Form Against Force”: Sustainability and Organicism in the Work of John Ruskin Deanna K. Kreisel, 101 6. Mapping the “Invisible Region, Far Away” in Dombey and Son Adam Grener, 121 Part III Scale 7. How We Might Live: Utopian Ecology in William Morris and Samuel Butler Benjamin Morgan, 139 8. From Specimen to System: Botanical Scale and the Environmental Sublime in Joseph Dalton Hooker’s Himalayas Lynn Voskuil, 161 9. “Infi nitesimal Lives”: Thomas Hardy’s Scale Effects Aaron Rosenberg, 182 Part IV Futures 10. Electric Dialectics: Delany’s Atlantic Materialism Monique Allewaert, 203 11. Satire’s Ecology Teresa Shewry, 223 Afterword: They Would Have Ended by Burning Their Own Globe Karen Pinkus, 241 Acknowledgments 249 List of Contributors 251 Index 253

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Book SynopsisPresents interpretations of American literature and politics, focusing on the work of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William S. Burroughs, and Thomas Pynchon. Analyzes how literary texts imagine America in utopian terms, contrasting American exceptionalism to non-capitalist visions of the American future.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Impossibly American | 1 1. A Revolutionary Haunt: Utopian Frontiers in William S. Burroughs’s Late Trilogy | 33 2. The People and the People: Democracy and Vitalism in Walt Whitman’s 1855 Leaves of Grass | 74 3. Nobody’s Wife: Affective Economies of Marriage in Emily Dickinson | 114 4. Idle Power: The Riot, the Commune, and Capitalist Time in Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day | 157 Coda: Assembling the Future | 205 Acknowledgments | 209 Notes | 213 Index | 241

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Book SynopsisPresents interpretations of American literature and politics, focusing on the work of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William S. Burroughs, and Thomas Pynchon. Analyzes how literary texts imagine America in utopian terms, contrasting American exceptionalism to non-capitalist visions of the American future.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Impossibly American | 1 1. A Revolutionary Haunt: Utopian Frontiers in William S. Burroughs’s Late Trilogy | 33 2. The People and the People: Democracy and Vitalism in Walt Whitman’s 1855 Leaves of Grass | 74 3. Nobody’s Wife: Affective Economies of Marriage in Emily Dickinson | 114 4. Idle Power: The Riot, the Commune, and Capitalist Time in Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day | 157 Coda: Assembling the Future | 205 Acknowledgments | 209 Notes | 213 Index | 241

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisDrawing on letters and diaries, this biography details Rose Wilder Lane's life and highlights her troubled relationship with an apparently cold and manipulative mother. It throws light on the writing of the ""Little House"" books.

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Book SynopsisThis text re-examines Hardy's novels, emphasizing the love triangles that populate his work. It argues that Hardy was actually sympathetic to his female characters, and refutes the generally accepted reason for Hardy's abandonment of fiction at the height of his success.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisExplores the tenuous interplay of gender and science to show how Victorian literature both challenged and reinforced a constrictive role for women. This book focuses on a specific body of literature involving women intensely associated with scientific pursuits, and examines selected noncanonical writings.Trade ReviewA subtle and illuminating study of the intersection of ideology and literature during the period of the New Woman and tumultuous changes in - and debates about - gender roles. - Tamar Heller, author of Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisThe raft that carries Huck and Jim down the Mississippi River is often seen as a symbol of adventure and freedom, but the physical specifics of the raft itself are rarely considered. Peter Beidler shows that understanding the material world of Huckleberry Finn, its limitations and possibilities, is vital to truly understanding Mark Twain's novel.Trade ReviewDr. Beidler’s critiques of inaccurate literary analyses and book illustrations will be of real value to historians and archaeologists with an interest in the navigation and trade on the western rivers, as well as to professionals in the field of American literature, and especially to all readers who want to know about the river world of Huck Finn."" - Kevin Crisman, author of The Eagle: An American Brig on Lake Champlain during the War of 1812Table of Contents Rafts and Other Rivercraft Acknowledgments Introduction “On such a craft as that”: Some Basic Questions 1. “A little section of a lumber raft”: A Rise, a Raft, a Crib 2. “Right in the middle of the wigwam”: Shelter, Oars, Smallpox 3. “Riding high like a duck”: Canoes, Boats, Ferries 4. “In amongst some bundles of shingles”: A Baby, a Barrel, a Home 5. “Generally known as a ‘sucker’”: A Boy, a Raft, a River Works Consulted Index

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Book SynopsisThe last installment of Scharnhorst's three-volume biography chronicles the life of Samuel Clemens between his family's extended trip to Europe in 1891 and his death in 1910. During this period, Clemens grapples with bankruptcy, the lecture circuit, loses two daughters and his wife, and writes some of his darkest, most critical works.

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Book SynopsisAn English translation of the German book Farbe bekennen. A compilation of texts, testimonials and other secondary sources, the collection brings to life the stories of Black German women living amid racism, sexism and other institutional constraints in Germany.

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Book SynopsisIn the tradition of The Swerve, this thrilling, detective-like work of literary history reveals how a poem created the world we live in today.Trade Review"There is only one poet capable of capturing the infinite in such a small space, and, we can now add, only one critic capable of capturing the mind-altering qualities of Stephane Mallarme's 1897 poem, "One Toss of the Dice." That a family man, a high school English teacher, and a follower of fashion could have unleashed the potential of the World Wide Web over a century ago is among the many revelations in R. Howard Bloch's astonishing book." -- Alice Kaplan, author of Dreaming in French "A vivid evocation, at moments hilarious and at others poignant, of the astonishing world that gathered around the poet Stephane Mallarme...And at the center, gathering moment as the story unfolds, is Mallarme's creation of his supremely radical poem." -- Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve "This was the poem that, in the 1920s, long after Mallarme's apparently obscure death, compelled T. S. Eliot to recognize that 'every battle this French poet fought with syntax represents the effort to transmit lead into gold, ordinary language into poetry.' And the rest of Mr. Bloch's beautifully clear book explains How a Poem Made Us Modern." -- Richard Howard, author of A Progressive Education "A tour de force by a brilliant scholar dedicated to the most mysterious of poets." -- Arthur Goldhammer, translator of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century

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Book SynopsisThe collected writings of lifelong African-American activist, Fannie Barrier Williams. She frankly denounces white men's sexual and economic victimization of black women and condemns the complicity of religious and political leaders in the immorality of segregation.Trade Review"A unique and important contribution to African American and women's history.... Highly recommended."—Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Harvard University "Deegan has provided a valuable service in collecting Williams's essays on race, gender, and civic engagement in Progressive America."—Journal of Illinois HistoryTable of ContentsTable of Contents Editor's Preface Introduction: "Fannie Barrier Williams and Her Life as a New Woman of Color, 1893-1918" by Mary Jo Deegan Part I: Autobiography 1. A Northern Negro's Autobiography Part II: African American Women 2. The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation 3. Club Movement among Negro Women 4. The Club Movement among the Colored Women 5. The Proglem of Employment for Negro Women 6. The Woman's Part in a Man's Business 7. The Colored Girl 8. Colored Women of Chicago Part III: African Americans 9. Religious Duty to the Negro 10. Industrial Education—Will It Solve the Negro Problem? 11. Do We Need Another Name? 12. The Negro and Public Opinion 13. The Smaller Economies 14. An Extension of the Conference Spirit 15. Vacation Values 16. Refining Influence of Art Part IV: Social Settlements 17. The Need of Social Settlement Work for the City Negro 18. The Frederick Douglass Centre: A Question of Social Betterment and Not of Social Equality 19. Social Bonds in the "Black Belt" of Chicago: Negro Organizations and the New Spirit Pervading Them 20. The Frederick Douglass Center[: The Institutional Foundation] 21. A New Method of Dealing with the Race Problem Part V: Eulogies 22. [In Memory of Philip D. Armour] 23. [Eulogoy of Susan B. Anthongy] 24. Report of Memorial Service for Rev. Celia Parker Woolley Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisIn Inscrutable Malice, Jonathan A. Cook expertly illuminates Melville''s abiding preoccupation with the problem of evil and the dominant role of the Bible in shaping his best-known novel. Drawing on recent research in the fields of biblical studies, the history of religion, and comparative mythology, Cook provides a new interpretation of Moby-Dick that places Melville''s creative adaptation of the Bible at the center of the work.Cook identifies two ongoing concerns in the narrative in relation to their key biblical sources: the attempt to reconcile the goodness of God with the existence of evil, as dramatized in the book of Job; and the discourse of the Christian end-times involving the final destruction of evil, as found in the apocalyptic books and eschatological passages of the Old and New Testaments.With his detailed reading of Moby-Dick in relation to its most important source text, Cook greatly expands the reader''s understanding of the moralTrade ReviewThis book has an added advantage of serving as a reader's guide to the novel, one which will be indispensable to any serious reader of Moby-Dick, whether for the first or the twentieth time. * Sewanee Review *The best reading of this iconic novel in recent memory. Under Cook's expert eye, Moby-Dick divulges secrets of the Second Coming and Melville's conflicting religious inclinations. Cook's masterful and wide-ranging command of Melville's library makes Moby-Dick into a guided tour through the Western canon. * Religion & Literature *Of all books about Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (and there are many), Jonathan A. Cook's is one that needed to be written. Cook organizes this potentially unwieldy and unfathomable topic in a way that scholars will find useful as a reference for repeated consultation. * Nineteenth-Century Literature *

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