Description
Book SynopsisIn addition to the definitive UVA text of Brown''s seminal novel, this edition includes an introduction setting the work in its historical, literary, and intellectual contexts. Related texts include selections from William Godwin''s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Erasmus Darwin''s Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794), Benjamin Franklin''s A Narrative of the Late Massacres (1764), and Thomas Barton''s The Conduct of the Paxton-Men (1764), as well excerpts from Brown''s own essays on somnambulism and the uses of history in fiction.
This is now the edition of choice for those of us who teach Brown's fascinating Edgar Huntly. Barnard and Shapiro explore the relevant historical, cultural, and literary backgrounds in their illuminating Introduction; they skillfully annotate the text; they provide useful and up-to-date bibliographies; and they append a number of revealing primary texts for further cultural contextualization. This edition will help to stimulate new thinking about race, empire, and sexuality in Brown's prescient novel of the American frontier. --Robert S. Levine, University of Maryland
The striking painting by a French artist on the cover of this American novel signals the editors' refreshing approach to Edgar Huntly through trans-Atlantic discourses of empire, radical-democratic social theory, sensibility, and sexuality. . . .This edition provides students with the tools to contextualize and analyze Edgar Huntly, including an extensive bibliography of relevant scholarship and footnotes that define unfamiliar words, give historical background, or refer the reader back to the introduction. Barnard and Shapiro's selection of related texts from works including William Godwin's Political Justice and Brown's essays gives students insight on Edgar Huntly's sources. --Yvette Piggush, Journal of the Early Republic
