The Life of George Eliot by
The life story of the Victorian novelist George Eliot is as dramatic and complex as her best plots. This new assessment of her life and work combines recent biographical research with penetrating literary criticism, resulting in revealing new interpretations of her literary work. A fresh look at George Eliot's captivating life story Includes original new analysis of her writing Deploys the latest biographical research Combines literary criticism with biographical narrative to offer a rounded perspective
George Eliot for the Twenty-First Century by
George Eliot for the Twenty-First Century reexamines Eliot two hundred years after her birth and offers an innovative critical reading that seeks to change perceptions of Eliot. Tracing Eliot's literary reception from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, K. M. Newton frames Eliot as an unorthodox radical and considers the philosophical, ethical, political, and artistic subtleties permeating her writings. Drawing from close readings of her novels, essays, and letters, Newton offers a new critical perspective on George Eliot and reveals her enduring relevance in the twenty-first century.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning by
A perceptive study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's life & poetry, based upon the letters of the Brownings & the letters of R. H. Horne & Mary Russell Mitford.
Mary Shelley by
The life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote the classic "Frankenstein" when she was only 18-years-old, goes beyond the story of how her novel was written and explores the real and tragic life of a writer who was flawed, brave, generous, and impetuous. Illustrations.
The Life of Charlotte Bronte by
Check out this biography about Victorian author, Charlotte Bronte, written by another Victorian author, Elizabeth Gaskell.
Elizabeth Gaskell: A Literary Life by
This literary biographical study examines the life and works of the mid-Victorian woman novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell, whose popularity is now well established. It places her writing in the context of her attitudes towards creative production, her relationship with publishers, and her literary friendships, as well as examining those events of her life which fed into her work. It pays particular attention to the ways in which she sought to reconcile the conflicting demands made upon her, as woman and as artist.
Emily Bronte by
This lucid and perceptive study subjects the Emily Brontë myth to radical scrutiny, questioning the validity of memorabilia and eye-witness accounts. Contrasting her art with the daguerreotype realism coming into vogue in the 1840's, Stevie Davies reads Emily Brontë's life in terms of her own image of landmarks buried or half-buried beneath drifting snow which disguises or betrays underlying realities. A radical reading of Wuthering Heights explores it as a poet's and musician's novel, which can be 'scored' as in opera or the piano transcriptions of symphonies, which Emily Brontë possessed and played. Close study of her sheet music; her germinal Brussels essays; books and journals in her possession; and translations into European languages will demonstrate the phenomenal intellectual range, originality and acuity of an author who can be regarded as a European.
Popular Victorian Women Writers by
Popular Victorian women writers considers a diverse group of women writers within the Victorian literary marketplace. It looks at authors such as Ellen Wood, Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton and Charlotte Yonge as well as less well-known writers including Jessie Fothergill and Eliza Meteyard.Each essay sets the individual author within her biographical and literary context and provides refreshing insights into their work. Together they bring the work of largely unknown authors and new perspectives on known authors to critical and public attention.Accessible and informative, the book is ideal for students of Victorian literature and culture as well as tutors and scholars of the period.
Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question by
This book was first published in 1999. This collection of essays by leading scholars from Britain, the USA and Canada opens up the limited landscape of Victorian novels by focusing attention on some of the women writers popular in their own time but forgotten or neglected by literary history. Spanning the entire Victorian period, this study investigates particularly the role and treatment of 'the woman question' in the second half of the century. There are discussions of marriage, matriarchy and divorce, satire, suffragette writing, writing for children, and links between literature and art. Moving from Margaret Oliphant and Charlotte Mary Yonge to Mary Ward, Marie Corelli, 'Ouida' and E. Nesbit, this book illuminates the complex cultural and literary roles, and the engaging contributions, of Victorian women writers.
Victorian Women Poets by 
A Serious Occupation by
This anthology of literary criticism by Victorian women of letters brings together a wealth of difficult-to-find writings. Originally published from the 1830s through the 1890s, the essays concern a range of topics including poetry, fiction, non-fiction prose, the roles of literature and of criticism, topical reviews of major works, and retrospectives of major authors. Together, they demonstrate the impressive depth and breadth of Victorian women's literary criticism. This Broadview anthology also includes an introduction, textual and explanatory notes, author biographies, and suggestions for further reading.
Victorian Women by
While the aristocratic women of the Victorian age have long preoccupied the popular imagination, seldom have women of other classes been granted a voice. Victorian Women is the first book to allow women of all classes to render their own lives, in their own words, from birth to old age, in the long nineteenth century between the French Revolution and the First World War. In letters, memoirs, and other contemporary sources these women describe their childhood and education; courtship, marriage and homemaking; sex and motherhood; marital breakdown; widowhood; and their pastimes and entertainments. Their voices, heretofore drowned by the cacophony of louder, often male versions of history, speak to us with clarity and poignancy, revealing strength of feeling, courage, and humor. We find in this book the unmarried woman worker, the single mother, the prostitute, as well as those who fought for professional recognition against the regiments of the church, government, and law.
Women Writers and Experimental Narratives by
This book explores the history of women's engagement with writing experimentally. Women writers have long used different narratives and modes of writing as a way of critiquing worlds and stories that they find themselves at odds with, but at the same time, as a way to participate in such spaces. Experimentation--of style, mode, voice, genre and language--has enabled women writers to be simultaneously creative and critical, engaged in and yet apart from stories and cultures that have so often seen them as 'other'. This collection shows that women writers in English over the past 400 years have challenged those ideas not only through explicit polemic and alternative representations but through disrupting the very modes of representation and story itself.
The History of British Women's Writing, 1880-1920 by
The ranks of English women writers rose steeply in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, contributing to the era's revolutionary social movements as well as to transforming literary genres in prose and poetry. The phenomena of 'the new' -- 'New Women', 'New Unionism', 'New Imperialism', 'New Ethics', 'New Critics', 'New Journalism', 'New Man' -- are this moment's touchstones. This book tracks the period's new social phenomena and unfolds its distinctively modern modes of writing. It provides expert introductions amid new insights into women's writing throughout the United Kingdom and around the globe.
Middlemarch by
The text of Middlemarch is that of the 1874 edition, the last corrected by the author. For this new edition, the text has been reset in a larger typeface for ease of reading. "Backgrounds" helps readers understand Eliot's ideas on life and art with generous selections from her letters, journals, essays, and other fictional works. "Contemporary Reviews" records the impressions of Sidney Colvin, Henry James, Joseph Jacobs, and Leslie Stephen. "Recent Criticism" collects eleven essays-seven of them new to this edition-which center on the novel's major themes. Contributors include Mark Schorer, Jerome Beaty, Cherry Wilhelm, Robert Heilman, Lee R. Edwards, Alan Mintz, T. R. Wright, Matthew Rich, Alan Shelston, and Claudia Moscovici. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are included.
The Mill on the Floss by
The text of The Mill on the Floss, that of the 1862 third edition for which Eliot made her last revisions, has been annotated in order to assist the reader with obscure references and allusions. "Backgrounds" includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centering on the novel's content and composition; "Brother and Sister" (1869), a little-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews and responses, both published and unpublished, on the novel, including those by Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinurne, and John Ruskin. Judiciously chosen from the wealth of essays on The Mill on the Floss published in this century, "Criticism" includes ten of the best studies of the novel, providing the reader with historical and critical perspective. The contributors are Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf, F. R. Leavis, George Levine, Ulrich Knoepflmacher, Philip Fisher, Mary Jacobus, John Kucich, Margaret Homans, and Deirdre David. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Aurora Leigh by
The text is accompanied by both explanatory annotations and textual notes. "Backgrounds and Contexts" includes thirty letters or letter excerpts by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning that trace Aurora Leigh's inception, evolution, and publication. Seven contemporary documents--on the "woman question," prostitution, socialism, and poetic theory--place the text historically. "Criticism" collects twenty-five assessments of Aurora Leigh from the period 1899-1993. A wide range of opinion is provided by George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ellen Moers, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Angela Leighton, Deirdre David, Dorothy Mermin, and Margaret Reynolds, among others. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Frankenstein by
Contemporary perspectives of the text are provided in two sections: Contexts helps place the novel in relation to the mind of its creator through writings by Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John William Polidori; Nineteenth-Century Responses collects six reactions to the book from the years 1818 to 1886. Criticism brings together twelve seminal essays. The emphasis is on range--both critical (psychoanalytic, mythic, new historicist, and feminist essays are included) and chronological (essays span the last thirty years). Christopher Small, George Lebine, Ellen Moers, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Barbara Johnson, Mary Poovey, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, William Veeder, Anne K. Mellor, Susan Winnett, Marilyn Butler, and Lawrence Lipking provide diverse perspectives. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Jane Eyre by
"Contexts" includes eighteen new selections and two new subsections: "Charlotte and Jane's Illustrated Book" which includes a letter from Bront? to her publisher W. S. Williams; "Vignettes from Bewick"; and "Charlotte Bront? and Bewick's "British Birds'" and "Charlotte Bront? as Governess," which includes letters to Emily Bront?, Ellen Nussey, W. S. Williams, and "The Governess-Grinders." "Criticism" collects six major essays on Jane Eyre, four of them new to the Third Edition. Contributors include Adrienne Rich, Sandra M. Gilbert, Jerome Beaty, Lisa Sternlieb, Jeffrey Sconce, and Donna Marie Nudd. A new Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.
North and South by
This Norton Critical Edition of her best-selling novel is annotated and edited by preeminent Gaskell scholar Alan Shelston. "Contexts" includes contemporary reviews and correspondence related to North and South, along with the full text of Gaskell's 1850 short story "Lizzie Leigh," which, like North and South, is set in industrial Manchester and deals with strong working women. This topic is further addressed in Bessie Rayner Parkes's essay on Victorian working women. "Criticism" collects eleven assessments of the novel, among them Louis Cazamian's 1904 study of industrial fiction and Hilary Schor's recent study of North and South in the context of discourse analysis. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Wuthering Heights by
For the Fourth Edition, the editor collated the 1847 text with the two modern texts (Norton's William J. Sale collation and the Clarendon), and found a great number of variants, including accidentals. This discovery led to changes in the body of the Norton Critical Edition text that are explained in the preface. New to "Backgrounds and Contexts" are additional letters, a compositional chronology, related prose, and reviews of the 1847 text. "Criticism" collects five important assessments of Wuthering Heights, three of them new to the Fourth Edition, including Lin Haire-Sargeant's essay on film adaptations of the novel.