Description
Book SynopsisQueen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond—among the most compelling and thought-provoking of Margaret Oliphant’s works of short fiction—tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Lycett-Landon, “two middle-aged people in the fullness of life and prosperity,” and of what becomes of their marriage when Mr. Lycett-Landon becomes uncommunicative while on an extended business trip.
In addition to an illuminating introduction, this edition includes a variety of background materials that help to set this extraordinary work in its literary and historical context.
Trade Review“This welcome edition of Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond allows readers to experience, perhaps for the first time, Margaret Oliphant’s exquisite skill at depicting ‘marriage [as] a tie which is curiously elastic.’ The novella is one of Oliphant’s many little-known shorter works which explore the ambiguity and psychological complexity of the relations between the genders with a sensitivity that anticipates the novels of Henry James. … Pam Perkins’s edition provides a perfect frame for the novella—an introduction to Oliphant’s life and works, excerpts from other literary tales of Eleanor and Rosamond, selections from bigamy laws and novels of the period that deal with bigamy, contemporary reviews, and contextual background for the novel’s sophisticated representations of class relations, suburbia, and its setting in London and Liverpool.” — Elsie Michie, Louisiana State University
“Margaret Oliphant’s works are hard to come by, so for this reason alone Pam Perkins’s edition of Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond is valuable. It is made substantially the more so by Perkins’s clear and helpful annotations and her illuminating and insightful introduction, situating the novella within the framework of contemporary fictional representations of bigamy while also highlighting Oliphant’s unique attention to issues of gender and class. … This is an admirable edition, relevant to those who know Oliphant as well as those encountering her for the first time.” — Emily Morris, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan
“It is very good to have one of Margaret Oliphant’s later short stories published in the form of an accessible student text, accompanied by contextual material which helps to explain the significance of her take on the recurrent Victorian subject of bigamous marriages. Long remembered only for her successful mid-century ‘Chronicles of Carlingford’ and her 1862 essay ‘Sensation Novels,’ … [Oliphant here] offers an extraordinary insight into the emotional cost that might be demanded in preserving her long-held belief in the virtue of female self-sacrifice.” — Elisabeth Jay, Oxford Brookes University
Table of Contents
- The Legend of Fair Rosamond
- from “Fair Rosamond,” Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765)
- from Mary Russell Mitford, Dramatic Scenes, Sonnets, and Other Poems (1827)
- from Pierce Egan, Fair Rosamond, An Historical Romance (1844)
- Bigamy Laws
- Section 22, Offences against the Person Act (1828)
- Section 57, Offences against the Person Act (1861)
- Bigamy in Sensation Novels
- from Wilkie Collins, The Two Destinies (1876)
- from Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Phantom Fortune (1883)
- Contemporary Reactions to Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond
- from “Magazines for January,” “Magazines for February,” The Sunday Times (1886)
- from “Cornhill Magazine (January, February, March),” The London Quarterly and Holborn Review (1886)
- from “Recent Short Stories,” The Spectator (1898)
- J.M. Barrie on Oliphant and on “Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond”
- J.M. Barrie, Introductory Note to The Widow’s Tale and Other Stories (1898)
- Victorian London and Liverpool
- from Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management (1861)
- from George and Weedon Grossmith, Diary of a Nobody (1888-9)
- from Black’s Guide to Liverpool and Birkenhead (1871)
- Images of Liverpool
