Search results for ""Broadview Press Ltd""

Published in 1749, the story of Mrs. Teachum and the nine pupils who make up her “little female academy” is widely recognized as the first full-length novel for children, and the first to be aimed specifically at girls. The daily experiences of Mrs. Teachum’s charges are interwoven with fables and fairy tales illustrating the book’s underlying principles, which draw on contemporary theories of education and virtue. As central to the history of the novel as it is to the development of children’s literature, The Governess is a pioneering work by one of the eighteenth century's most respected women writers.This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction that places The Governess in its cultural and literary context; appendices include examples of eighteenth-century educational literature and selections from Fielding’s correspondence.

Read more less

Based on Leonora Sansay's eyewitness accounts of the final days of French rule in Saint Domingue (Haiti), Secret History is a vivid account of race warfare and domestic violence. Sansay's writing provocatively draws comparisons between Saint Domingue during the Haitian Revolution and the postrevolutionary United States, while fluidly combining qualities of the eighteenth-century epistolary novel, colonial travel writing, and political analysis. Laura, Sansay's second novel, features as its protagonist a beautiful impoverished orphan who throws herself headlong into a secret marriage with a young medical student. When her husband dies in a duel in an effort to protect his wife's reputation, Laura finds herself once more alone in the world. The republication of these works will contribute to a significant revision of thinking about early American literary history.This Broadview edition offers a rich selection of contextual materials, including selections from periodical literature about Haiti, engravings, letters written by Sansay to her friend Aaron Burr, historical material related to the Burr trial for treason, and excerpts from literature referenced in the novels.

Read more less

First published in 1832, Shakespeare’s Heroines is a unique hybrid of Shakespeare criticism, women’s rights activism, and conduct literature. Jameson’s collection of readings of female characters includes praise for unexpected role models as varied as Portia, Cleopatra, and Lady Macbeth; her interpretations of these and other characters portray intellect, passion, political ambition, and eroticism as acceptable aspects of women’s behaviour. This inventive work of literary criticism addresses the problems of women’s education and participation in public life while also providing insightful, original, and entertaining readings of Shakespeare’s women.This Broadview Edition includes a critical introduction that places Shakespeare’s Heroines in the context of Jameson’s literary career and political life. Appendices include personal correspondence and other literary and political writings by Jameson, examples of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Shakespeare criticism, and selections from Victorian conduct books.

Read more less

Written during the English Civil War and Interregnum when the public theatres were closed and Margaret Cavendish was living away from England in exile, Bell in Campo and The Sociable Companions are scathing satires that speak to the role of women's agency amidst this cultural tumult. In Bell in Campo, a group of virtuous women follow their husbands to war and, refusing to remain docilely out of harm's way, form an army of their own. The Sociable Companions details the struggles of four women from impoverished Royalist families trying to survive in a rapacious marriage market at the war's end.This Broadview Edition presents these two complementary plays together, along with supplementary materials on Cavendish's life, the participation of women in the combat of the English Civil War, the conduct of the Royalist military forces, and seventeenth-century social and marriage conventions.

Read more less

Robert Bage's Hermsprong satirizes English society of the 1790s targeting, in particular, corrupt clergymen, grasping lawyers and wicked aristocrats. The protagonist, a European raised among Native Americans, visits Europe and is dismayed by what he encounters. While such satire might seem conventional enough, Hermsprong is distinguished from other political novels of the period by its comedy, and it is a measure of Bage's success that he won the admiration of writers as different in political outlook as Mary Wollstonecraft and Sir Walter Scott. Indeed, Hermsprong is built around debate, and celebrates the pleasures of the lively exchange of ideas.This Broadview edition contains extensive primary source appendices including material by William Godwin, Benjamin Franklin, Pierre de Charlevoix, and Voltaire.

Read more less

William Godwin was one of the most popular novelists of the Romantic era; P.B. Shelley praised him, Byron drew heavily on his narrative style, and Mary Shelley, Godwin’s daughter, dedicated Frankenstein to him.Caleb Williams is the riveting account of a young man whose curiosity leads him to pry into a murder from the past. The first novel of crime and detection in English literature, Caleb Williams is also a powerful exposé of the evils and inequities of the political and social system in 1790s Britain.In addition to the text itself, the editors have included an extensive selection of primary source materials from the period, ranging from Godwin’s original manuscript ending and excerpts from his political writings to contemporary reviews, the political writings of Burke and Paine, and materials on criminals and the English prison system.

Read more less

Mary Robinson’s work has begun again to assume a central place in discussions of Romanticism. A writer of the 1790’s—a decade which saw the birth of Romanticism, revolution, and enormous popular engagement with political ideas—Robinson was acknowledged in her time as a leading poet. Her writing exhibits great variety: charm, theatricality, and emotional resonance are all characteristics Robinson displays. She was by turns a poet of sensibility, a poet of popular culture, a chronicler of the major events of the time, and a participant in some of its chief aesthetic innovations. This long-awaited collection is the first critical edition of her poems.

Read more less

The protagonist of Charlotte Dacre's best known novel, Zofloya, or the Moor (1806) is unique in women's Gothic and Romantic literature, and has more in common with the heroines of Sade or M.G. Lewis than with those of Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Smith or Jane Austen. No heroine of Radcliffe or Austen could exult, as Victoria does in this novel, that "there is certainly a pleasure...in the infliction of prolonged torment."The sexual desires and ambition of Dacre's protagonist, Victoria, drive her to seduce, torture and murder. Victoria is inspired to greater criminal and illicit acts by a seductive Lucifer, disguised as a Moor, before she too is plunged into an abyss by her demon lover. The text's unusual evocations of the female body and feminine subject are of particular interest in the context of the history of sexuality and of the body; after embarking on a series of violent crimes, Victoria's body actually begins to grow stronger and decidedly more masculine.Among the documents included as appendices to this volume are a selection of Dacre's poetry and excerpts from Bienville's Nymphomania, a medical treatise of the time aimed at a lay audience that focuses largely on the dangerous powers of women's imagination; inspired by improper novels, it is alleged that women may plunge into madness, violence and death—much as does the protagonist of Zofloya herself.

Read more less

Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is a witty satire of the sentimental novel, a popular genre in Britain throughout the 1790s and the Regency. When it first appeared in 1811, the words in its title carried significant cultural weight beyond the confines of the novel, and into both popular and learned discourse. Through her dual heroines, Austen addresses, and satirizes, notions of sense and sensibility, and engages with the issues of inheritance, marriage, and love.The story concerns two sisters: the level-headed Elinor and the passionate and impulsive Marianne. When their father dies, his son by a previous marriage assumes possession of the family home. Marianne and Elinor, left to the care of their mercenary brother John and his wife Fanny, must remove to a cottage with their mother. Each sister meets a man in whom she is interested, and as with other Austen novels, requited love does not come easily.This newly annotated edition offers a thorough and perceptive introduction and a wide range of carefully selected contextual materials that further explore the term “sensibility.”

Read more less

This text introduces university students to the philosophical ethos of critical thinking, as well as to the essential skills required to practice it. The authors believe that Critical Thinking should engage students with issues of broader philosophical interest while they develop their skills in reasoning and argumentation. The text is informed throughout by philosophical theory concerning argument and communication—from Aristotle's recognition of the importance of evaluating argument in terms of its purpose to Habermas's developing of the concept of communicative rationality. The authors' treatment of the topic is also sensitive to the importance of language and of situation in shaping arguments, and to the necessity in argument of some interplay between reason and emotion. Unlike many other texts in this area, then, Good Reasons for Better Arguments helps to explain both why argument is important and how the social role of argument plays an important part in determining what counts as a good argument.If this text is distinctive in the extent to which it deals with the theory and the values of critical thinking, it is also noteworthy for the thorough grounding it provides in the skills of deductive and inductive reasoning; the authors present the reader with useful tools for the interpretation, evaluation and construction of arguments. A particular feature is the inclusion of a wide range of exercises, rich with examples that illuminate the practice of argument for the student. Many of the exercises are self testing, with answers provided at the back of the text; others are appropriate for in-class discussion and assignments.Challenging yet accessible, Good Reasons for Better Arguments brings a fresh perspective to an essential subject.

Read more less

Increasingly, writing handbooks are seen as over-produced and overpriced. One stands out: The Broadview Guide to Writing is published in an elegant but simple format, and sells for roughly half the price of its fancier-looking competitors. That does not change with the new edition; what does change and stay up-to-date is the content of the book. The seventh Canadian edition brings a substantial re-organization of the contents under three headings: Writing Processes, Writing Mechanics, and Writing Contexts. Coverage of the MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE styles of documentation has been substantially revised to reflect the most recent updates, including the 2020 APA and 2021 MLA changes. As in earlier editions, the Broadview Guide offers wide ranging coverage of academic argument; of writing and critical thinking; and of writing about literature. Coverage of personal and informal writing is included for the first time—as is a sample literary essay in MLA style (in addition to the sample MLA interdisciplinary essay). The 'How to be Good with Words' chapter (on issues of gender, race, religion etc.) has been extensively revised, as has the material on electronic etiquette.

Read more less

The Critical Thinking Book covers not only standard topics such as definitions, fallacies, and argument identification, but also other pertinent themes such as consumer choice in a market economy and political choice in a representative democracy. Interesting historical asides are included throughout, as are images, diagrams, and reflective questions. A wealth of exercises is provided, both within the text and on a supplemental website for instructors.

Read more less

The third edition of the Victorian Era volume of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature includes a number of changes and new additions, including the complete texts of In Memoriam A.H.H., The Importance of Being Earnest, Carmilla, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as Contexts sections on 'Work and Poverty,' 'Women in Society,' 'Sexuality in the Victorian Era,' 'Nature and the Environment,' 'The New Woman,' and 'Britain, Empire, and a Wider World.' The third edition also offers expanded representation of writers of color, including Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, Toru Dutt, Mary Ann Shadd, and Rabindranath Tagore.

Read more less

An Introduction to Metaphysics offers an engaging survey of central metaphysical topics, including truth, universals, the nature of mind, personal identity, free will, time, and the existence of God. The book is pitched at an intermediate undergraduate level and is suitable for students without background knowledge in these areas. Topically organized, it examines a variety of historical and contemporary positions relevant to each of the included themes. Memorable and amusing drawings by Gillian Wilson are interspersed throughout the text to illustrate concepts and examples.

Read more less

In all six of its volumes The Broadview Anthology of British Literature presents British literature in a truly distinctive light. Fully grounded in sound literary and historical scholarship, the anthology takes a fresh approach to many canonical authors, and includes a wide selection of work by lesser-known writers. The anthology also provides wide-ranging coverage of the worldwide connections of British literature, and it pays attention throughout to matters such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. The full anthology comprises six bound volumes, together with an extensive website component; the latter is accessible by using the passcode obtained with the purchase of one or more of the bound volumes. A two-volume Concise Edition and a one-volume Compact Edition are also available.

Read more less

Drawing from the same text as the complete Broadview edition of the Tales, which is based on the famous Ellesmere Manuscript, this selected edition also features a critical introduction, marginal glosses in modern English of difficult words, and explanatory footnotes. The most widely taught appendix material from the complete edition is included, along with ten illustrations from the Ellesmere Manuscript.The second edition includes a new glossary, a timeline of Chaucer’s life and times, and detailed headers showing the section and line numbers, making it easier to find a specific section of the poem. Several popular prologues and tales have also been added to the selection: The Cook’s Prologue and Tale, The Friar’s Prologue and Tale, The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale, and The Parson’s Prologue.

Read more less

That James Joyce’s “The Dead” forms an extraordinary conclusion to his collection Dubliners, there can be no doubt. But as many have pointed out, “The Dead” may equally well be read as a novella—arguably, one of the finest novellas ever written.“The Dead,” a “story of public life,” as Joyce categorized it, was written more than a year after Joyce had finished the other stories in the collection, and was meant to redress what he felt was their “unnecessary harsh[ness].” Set on the feast of the epiphany, it is a haunting tale of connection and of alienation, reflecting, in the words of Stanislaus Joyce (James’s brother and confidant), “the nostalgic love of a rejected exile.”The present volume highlights “The Dead” for readers who wish to focus on that great work in a concise volume—and for university courses in which it is not possible to cover all of Dubliners. But it also gives a strong sense of how that story is part of a larger whole. Stories from each of the other sections of Dubliners have been included, and a wide range of background materials is included as well, providing a vivid sense of the literary and historical context out of which the work emerged.

Read more less

The unique blend of fairy tale atmosphere and social realism in this novel laid the groundwork for modern fantasy literature. In the novel, Little Diamond, a kind and precocious boy living in poverty, is befriended by the mysterious North Wind, who takes him on her nightly adventures. Written in intensely poetic language, At the Back of the North Wind transcends the genres of children’s book or fairy tale.Appendices include essays on childhood by contemporaries such as John Ruskin and Charles Dickens, as well as contextualizing selections from Victorian fantasy and fairy tales.

Read more less

Happy Lives, Good Lives offers a thorough introduction to a variety of perspectives on happiness. Among the questions at issue: Is happiness only a state of mind, or is it something more? Is it the same for everyone? Is it under our control, and if so, to what extent? Can we be mistaken about whether we are happy? What role, if any, does happiness play in living a good life? Is it sometimes morally wrong to pursue happiness? Should governments promote happiness through public policy? Asking and answering these questions is worthwhile not only as an intellectual exercise, but also as a means of gaining practical insight into how best to pursue a happy life.

Read more less

When it first appeared in 1767, this novel was called a “sort of second Robinson Crusoe; full of wonders.” Indeed, The Female American is an adventure novel about an English protagonist shipwrecked on a deserted isle, where survival requires both individual ingenuity and careful negotiations with visiting local Indians. But what most distinguishes Winkfield’s novel is her protagonist, a woman who is of mixed race. Though the era’s popular novels typically featured women in the confining contexts of the home and the bourgeois marriage market, Winkfield’s novel portrays an autonomous and mobile heroine living alone in the wilds of the New World, independently interacting with both Native Americans and visiting Europeans. The Female American is also one of the earliest novelistic efforts to articulate an American identity.This second edition has been updated throughout and includes a greatly expanded selection of historical materials on castaway narratives and on the cultural context of colonial America.

Read more less

Set in Soweto outside Johannesburg, Between Two Worlds is one of the most important novels of South Africa under apartheid. Originally published under the title Muriel at Metropolitan, the novel was for some years banned (on the grounds of language derogatory to Afrikaners) even as it received worldwide acclaim. It was later issued in the Longman African Writers Series, but has for some years been out of print and unavailable.This Broadview edition includes a new introduction by the author describing the circumstances in which she wrote Between Two Worlds.

Read more less

Arthur Conan Doyle’s second Sherlock Holmes novel is both a detective story and an imperial romance. Ostensibly the story of Mary Morstan, a beautiful young woman enlisting the help of Holmes to find her vanished father and solve the mystery of her receipt of a perfect pearl on the same date each year, it gradually uncovers a tale of treachery and human greed. The action audaciously ranges from penal settlements on the Andaman Islands to the suburban comfort of South London, and from the opium-fuelled violence of Agra Fort during the Indian ‘Mutiny’ to the cocaine-induced contemplation of Holmes’ own Baker Street.This Broadview Edition places Doyle’s tale in the cultural, political, and social contexts of late nineteenth-century colonialism and imperialism. The appendices provide a wealth of relevant extracts from hard-to-find sources, including official reports, memoirs, newspaper editorials, and anthropological studies.

Read more less

A United Empire Loyalist family flees from Boston to New Brunswick during the American Revolution. In late October, 1785, they host a reunion, and are joined by two veterans and a stranger whom they assume also to have been a former soldier on the Loyalist side. But the stranger reveals himself to be a Rebel seeking to avenge the death of his brother; at gunpoint he demands that the others choose one among them to be executed at first light.First performed by the Stratford Festival in 1993, Fair Liberty's Call has since been frequently produced across North America.

Read more less

Helen Maria Williams was a poet, novelist, and radical thinker deeply immersed in the political struggles of the 1790s. Her Letters Written in France is the first and most important of eight volumes chronicling the French Revolution to an England fearful of another civil war. Her twenty-six letters recounting old regime tyranny and revolutionary events provide both an apology for the Revolution and a representation of it as sublime spectacle.

Read more less

Winner: 2002 Choice Outstanding Academic Title AwardWhat are human rights? What justifies us in believing we have them? What are rights-holders and duty-bearers? Who should bear the costs and responsibilities for making human rights real? Why have some criticized the human rights perspective? And how can those supportive of human rights best respond? These and other conceptual issues are discussed in full in the first part of this book. The second part offers a detailed account of how the human rights idea came to be such a powerful force in the contemporary world; it traces the evolution of human rights from their origins to their present position in our daily lives, in political struggles, and in both national and international law.

Read more less

The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory, Concise Edition is less than half the length of the full anthology, but preserves the main principles of the larger work. A number of longer poems (such as Tennyson's In Memoriam) are included in their entirety; there are generous selections from the work of all major poets, and a representative selection of other work; the work of Victorian women poets features very prominently; and a substantial selection of poetic theory is included to round out the volume.

Read more less

More Precisely is a rigorous and engaging introduction to the mathematics necessary to do philosophy. It is impossible to fully understand much of the most important work in contemporary philosophy without a basic grasp of set theory, functions, probability, decision theory, and modality. More Precisely is written for people who wish to engage with contemporary philosophical writing but first need to fill gaps in their technical knowledge. Eric Steinhart provides lucid explanations of many basic mathematical concepts and sets out most commonly used notational conventions. He also demonstrates how mathematics applies to fundamental issues in various branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and ethics. This second edition adds a substantive section on decision and game theory, as well as a chapter on information theory and the efficient coding of information.

Read more less

Israel Zangwill, an Anglo-Jewish author and son of immigrants, wrote The Melting-Pot to demonstrate how immigrants could become good American citizens, hoping to forestall the kinds of restrictions—particularly against Russian Jews—that had been enacted in his home country. In 1908, when the play first appeared on an American stage, rates of immigration were high and many Americans feared that these particular newcomers would unalterably change the nation’s character. Politicians and others called for restricted immigration and stringent tests for citizenship. The Melting-Pot did not prevent the US government from enacting stringent immigration restrictions in 1924. But it became Zangwill’s most popular and most continuously performed play, and it popularized a metaphor for America—the melting pot—that has been discussed and debated ever since.This edition presents the play in its historical context, with readings from the time on immigration and intermarriage, as well as the settlement house movement and the Kishinev pogrom, which both figure prominently in the drama. Excerpts from the many and diverse reviews of the play highlight why it was so controversial. The Melting-Pot evokes questions about diversity and national identity that are still a contentious part of the national conversation.

Read more less

Believing herself to be suffering from an incurable condition, Harriet Martineau wrote Life in the Sick-Room in 1844. In this work, which is both memoir and treatise, Martineau seeks to educate the healthy and ill alike on the spiritual and psychological dimensions of chronic suffering. Covering such topics as "Sympathy to the Invalid," "Temper," and "Becoming Inured," the work occupies a crucial place in the culture of invalidism that prospered in Victorian England.This Broadview edition also includes medical documents pertaining to Martineau's case; other writings on health by Martineau; excerpts from her other autobiographical writings; selected correspondence with Florence Nightingale; excerpts from contemporary works of sick-room literature; and reviews.

Read more less

A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison offers a remarkable perspective on eighteenth-century America. A white settler by birth, Mary Jemison was taken captive as a child in 1758 and adopted by two Seneca sisters. Refusing offers to return to settler society, she chose to spend the remainder of her life as a Seneca wife, mother, and respected community member. In 1823, the now-elderly Jemison shared her life story with white American writer James Seaver, who published it as a captivity narrative the following year. Conscious of the impacts of Seaver’s editorial hand, this edition foregrounds Jemison’s voice while also recentering Indigenous perspectives through an informative introduction and an illuminating selection of contextual materials.

Read more less

The Afrofuturist plot of Pauline E. Hopkins's Of One Blood (1902-03) weaves together a lost African city, bigamy, incest, murder, ancient prophecies, a thwarted leopard attack, racial passing, baby switching, mesmerism, and hauntings—both literal ghost hauntings and metaphoric hauntings from the sins of slavery. The Broadview Edition offers for the first time annotations and appendices that contextualize the novel in relation to magazines, Black feminism, travels to Africa, racial discourses, scientific and medical debates, and musical culture. The edition's introduction surveys current debates about Hopkins's textual borrowings of from other contemporary writings, and the appendices provide extensive materials on the novel's cultural, musical, and political contexts.

Read more less

When Branded: A Diary was published in Berlin in 1920, Emmy Hennings was called the most important woman writer of her day. Her autobiographical novel offers a sharp critique of patriarchy and the social injustices of the last decade of the German Empire, infused with a mysticism that celebrates sexual love as a spiritual gift and assigns saintly status to beggars and sex workers. Drawing on the experimentation of Dadaists and Expressionists and inspired by modern technologies such as the camera and gramophone, Hennings radically shatters novelistic conventions. Over a century after the novel’s publication, this translation finally introduces an important modernist voice to English-language readers, accompanied by an illuminating selection of contextual materials and an informative introduction.

Read more less

Charlotte Riddell’s The Uninhabited House (1875) tells the story of River Hall and the secrets that are hidden behind its doors. Within this haunted house, Riddell combines the supernatural with Victorian anxieties over stolen inheritance, crime, greed, and class mobility. This new Broadview Edition includes a detailed biography of Charlotte Riddell and illustrations from the original appearance of the novella in Routledge’s Magazine; it also includes Riddell’s ghost story “The Open Door” (1882), which serves as a useful companion text for The Uninhabited House. The contextual material in the edition highlights Victorian cultural, historical, and literary influences on Riddell’s text, including women’s contributions to the ghost story, print culture, and the development of supernatural fiction; the link between ghost stories and the holidays; and the haunted house, ghost hunting, and popular beliefs about ghosts in the Victorian era.

Read more less

This new edition of Women and Economics highlights the importance of Charlotte Perkins Gilman as a leading public intellectual of the Progressive Era. It contains Gilman's most influential economic analysis, including her signature idea that the relationship between men and women is at core 'sexuo-economic.' Gilman applies ideas and techniques from evolutionary science to the study of marriage and the family. Her highly original approach reveals that female dependency is not a natural but rather a cultivated phenomenon. Women and Economics proposes wide-reaching social and economic reforms that were radical at the time and, as numerous twenty-first-century feminist economists continue to argue, are yet to be achieved today.Related literary works by Gilman and historical documents allow readers to situate Gilman's ideas in relation to larger debates concerning labour relations, the family, and women's role in society.

Read more less

Agnes Grey was one of a trio of novels that defined the 'governess novel' in 1847 and 1848. Alongside Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, Agnes Grey may be the most radical of the three. Agnes Grey is the younger daughter of a clergyman and his wife of modest means, cherished but also infantilized. When her father's mercantile investment goes disastrously wrong, Agnes decides to contribute to the family's financial rebuilding by working as a governess, despite her mother and sister's misgivings about her fitness for such work. Her first position is indeed trying, as the parents and children are uncouth and even cruel. Her second position is slightly more congenial, but she is still manipulated and ignored. Still, Agnes perseveres and begins to build relationships outside the family, most importantly, with a kind, empathetic young curate. As life brings more trials to Agnes and her family, we watch her persevere in her steady path of hope and determination.This Broadview Edition provides extensive historical documents on the novel's reception, the role of the governess in Victorian England, and contemporary debates about the treatment of non-human animals.

Read more less

The Alchemist has long been admired as one of Ben Jonson's best dramas-Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously deemed it one of the most 'perfect' plots in literature. Its satiric cleverness and metatheatricality have delighted audiences from its first performance to the present day; readers and play-goers are swept up in the schemes of a fake alchemist and other determined fraudsters whose scams appear to offer easy wealth and immortality to their morally compromised victims. While no characters emerge unscathed by Jonson's satire, and while alchemy itself is revealed as most likely a sham, the play is nonetheless a tribute to the transformative - indeed, the alchemical-powers of the theater.This edition includes a helpful introduction to the play, including discussion of its performance history and background information on alchemy. Thorough annotations to the text are also provided, as are contextual materials, including a selection of Jonson's sources, further materials on alchemy, and an example of the 'rogue' or 'coney-catching' literature that informs Jonson's portrayal of the grifters in the play.

Read more less

As George Orwell wrote in 1940, “Everyone who has ever read When the Sleeper Wakes remembers it.” Graham, the “sleeper” of the title, falls into a cataleptic trance in 1897. Graham will survive on life support for 203 years, suddenly waking in 2100. He wakes to a London encased in a glass dome, in which the Victorian class system has hardened into castes and a revolution is brewing. An important influence on later dystopian novels, Sleeper is a deeply pessimistic book, although Wells could not resist an ending ambiguous enough to permit the reader a faint gleam of optimism. The novel was re-written and published in 1908 as The Sleeper Awakes, but this edition preserves the original version. Historical appendices include contemporary reviews, Henri Lanos illustrations from The Graphic, and other utopian fiction from the period.

Read more less

In Ragged Dick, Horatio Alger’s most successful book, Alger codified the basic formula he would follow in nearly a hundred subsequent novels for boys: a young hero, inexperienced in the temptations of the city but morally armed to resist them, is unexpectedly forced to earn a livelihood. The hero’s exemplary struggle — to retain his virtue, to clear his name of accusations, and to gain economic independence — was the basis of the Alger plot. Hugely popular at the turn of the twentieth century, Alger’s works have at different times been framed as a model for the “American dream” and as dangerously exciting sensationalism for young readers; Gary Scharnhorst’s new introduction separates the myth of Alger as “success ideologue” from the more complex messages conveyed in his work.Ragged Dick is paired in this edition with Risen from the Ranks, another coming-of-age story of a young man achieving respectability. Historical appendices include extensive contemporary reviews, material on the “success myth” associated with Alger, and parodies of Alger’s work.

Read more less

As nearly all of its reviewers pointed out, Clotel was an audience-minded performance, an effort to capitalize on the post—Uncle Tom’s Cabin “mania” for abolitionist fiction in Great Britain, where William Wells Brown lived between 1849 and 1854. The novel tells the story of Clotel and Althesa, the fictional daughters of Thomas Jefferson and his mixed-race slave. Like the popular and entertaining public lectures that Brown gave in England and America, Clotel is a series of startling, attention-grabbing narrative “attractions.” Brown creates in this novel a delivery system for these attractions in an effort to draw as many readers as possible toward anti-slavery and anti-racist causes. Rough, studded with caricatures, and intimate with the racism it ironizes, Clotel is still capable of creating a potent mix of discomfort and delight.This edition aims to make it possible to read Clotel in something like its original cultural context. Geoffrey Sanborn’s Introduction discusses Brown’s extensive plagiarism of other authors in composing Clotel, as well as his narrative strategies within the novel itself. Appendices include material on slave auctions, contemporary attractions and amusements, and the topic of plagiarism more broadly.

Read more less

Notes from the Underground is recounted from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who describes himself as sick, spiteful, and unattractive. His thoughts and his moods veer unpredictably as he reflects on the folly of idealism and the reality of human squalor and degradation.The psychological power of the book is deeply rooted in the conflicts and contradictions that afflict the narrator—many of which seem to have afflicted Dostoevsky himself. Once attracted to idealistic and utopian notions, he subsequently found himself repelled by them. A passionate advocate of freedom, he had little confidence that humans could use freedom for good. The narrator of Notes from the Underground is not a unified self, but a self-contradictory character, like his author. His bewildering complexity and relentless self-analysis make him one of the most memorable and thought-provoking protagonists of modern literature.This new translation of Notes from the Underground renders Dostoevsky’s famous work in readable and idiomatic contemporary English. As well as the full text of the work itself and an informative introduction, this edition provides background materials that offer personal and intellectual context for the work. These materials (also newly translated) include writings from some of the thinkers against whom Dostoevsky positioned himself; excerpts from Dostoevsky’s personal letters and his earlier published works; and a substantial selection of relevant illustrations and photographs.

Read more less

Arguing with People brings developments from the field of Argumentation Theory to bear on critical thinking in a clear and accessible way. This book expands the critical thinking toolkit, and shows how those tools can be applied in the hurly-burly of everyday arguing. Gilbert emphasizes the importance of understanding real arguments, understanding just who you are arguing with, and knowing how to use that information for successful argumentation. Interesting examples and partner exercises are provided to demonstrate tangible ways in which the book’s lessons can be applied.

Read more less

This book introduces the vast topic of Indian philosophy. It begins with a study of the major Upanishads, and then surveys the philosophical ideas contained in the Bhagavadgita. After a short excursion into Buddhism, it summarizes the salient ideas of the six systems of Indian philosophy: Nyaya, Vaisesika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva Mimamsa, and Vedanta. It concludes with an introduction to contemporary Indian thought.

Read more less

This book explains the basic concepts of environmental ethics and applies them to global environmental problems. The author concisely introduces basic moral theories, discusses how these theories can be extended to consider the non-human world, and examines how environmental ethics interacts with modern society’s economic approach to the environment. Online multiple-choice questions encourage the reader’s active learning.

Read more less

This book guides readers through ten classic works of Asian philosophy. Several major schools of Eastern thought are discussed, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism/Taoism, and Chan/Zen. The author connects the ideas of these schools to those of Western philosophy, thereby making the material accessible to people who are unfamiliar with the cultures and intellectual traditions of Asia. A wide range of important topics are addressed: reality, time, self, knowledge, ethics, human nature, enlightenment, and death.

Read more less

This is an edition of what are arguably Leibniz’s three most important presentations of his metaphysical system: the Discourse on Metaphysics, from 1686, and The Principles of Nature and of Grace and The Monadology, from 1714. Based on the Latta and Montgomery translations and revised by the editor, these texts set out the essentials of Leibniz’s mature metaphysical views. The edition includes an introductory essay and a set of appendices of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts, which help illuminate and contextualize Leibniz’s ideas. Among these are extensive passages from Leibniz’s Theodicy, many of which are cited in The Monadology.

Read more less

A Marriage Below Zero is the first novel in English to explicitly explore the subject of male homosexuality. Written by a British émigré to America, the New York theater critic Alfred J. Cohen, under the pseudonym of “Alan Dale,” this first-person narrative is told by a young Englishwoman, Elsie Bouverie, who gradually discovers that her new husband, Arthur Ravener, is romantically involved with another man. Denounced on publication (“a saturnalia in which the most monstrous forms of human vice exhibit themselves shamelessly” wrote one reviewer), the novel was published during the public exposure of a London homosexual brothel frequented by upper-class men and telegraph boys. A Marriage Below Zero reflected late-nineteenth-century fears and anxieties about homosexuality, women’s position in marriage, and the threat that seemingly new, illicit forms of desire posed to marriageable women and to the Victorian family.This Broadview edition includes excerpts from the era’s pro-homosexual tracts, scientific and legal documents, contemporary feminist commentary on the new “dandyism,” and newspaper accounts of late-Victorian same-sex scandals. Highlights of the volume include excerpts from Charles Dickens’s 1836 account of his visit to Newgate Prison, where he witnessed the last two men in Britain executed for sodomy, George Bernard Shaw’s 1889 unpublished letter attacking the social purity movement’s legislation against homosexual men, and a never-before reprinted 1898 article from Reynolds Magazine, “Sex Mania,” that warned of an increasing number of homosexual men choosing to enter marriages as a cover for an illicit life.

Read more less