Search results for ""Author Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina""

Born in England and transplanted to New York toward the end of the Civil War, Burnett made her home in both countries, and today both countries claim her as their own. The Secret Garden, her best-known work, became an instant modern classic and world-wide bestseller upon its publication in 1911. The text of this Norton Critical Edition is based on the first edition and is accompanied by explanatory annotations. "Backgrounds and Contexts" and "Letters" illuminate important aspects of Burnett’s life and work and include her own writings on gardens and their spiritual healing. Four illustrations point to Burnett’s prominence in popular culture. "Criticism" includes fourteen contemporary reviews and nine recent critical views of The Secret Garden, including Jerry Phillips’s sociopolitical interpretation and Phyllis Bixler’s comparative analysis of the Broadway musical adaptation of the novel. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

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Frances Hodgson Burnett was famous in her time for her adult novels and her forays into children's literature with Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess. The Secret Garden, her story of an orphan girl who moves from India to the British countryside, has become a favorite book of every generation thereafter. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, the author of the definitive biography of Burnett, brings out aspects of Burnett's life that led her to write the book, details of the Victorian England time period, attitudes toward children, and Burnett's spiritual leanings. Gerzina captures the magical nature of the tale and the coming together of three children through restoring a hidden garden. With over one hundred illustrations, many in vibrant color, The Annotated Secret Garden is an enchanting gift for any child or for any adult who is still a feisty child underneath.

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Black Victorians/Black Victoriana is a welcome attempt to correct the historical record. Although scholarship has given us a clear view of nineteenth-century imperialism, colonialism, and later immigration from the colonies, there has for far too long been a gap in our understanding of the lives of blacks in Victorian England. Without that understanding, it remains impossible to assess adequately the state of the black population in Britain today. Using a transatlantic lens, the contributors to this book restore black Victorians to the British national picture. They look not just at the ways blacks were represented in popular culture but also at their lives as they experienced them—as workers, travelers, lecturers, performers, and professionals. Dozens of period photographs bring these stories alive and literally give a face to the individual stories the book tells.The essays taken as a whole also highlight prevailing Victorian attitudes toward race by focusing on the ways in which empire building spawned a "subculture of blackness" consisting of caricature, exhibition, representation, and scientific racism absorbed by society at large. This misrepresentation made it difficult to be both black and British while at the same time it helped to construct British identity as a whole. Covering many topics that detail the life of blacks during this period, Black Victorians/Black Victoriana will be a landmark contribution to the emergent field of black history in England.

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