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Visitors Since 8 July 1999This page started as on old reading list for my field exam (or qualifiers as some graduate schools call them). I've updated the list and added abstracts on those novels I particularly enjoyed. Later I add some links to pages that feature related texts or information. |
WARNING: Some of the links to pages on various authors are not done by academics and contain incomplete bibliographies or inaccurate dates. Please double check information from pages by other webmistresses and webmasters.
Jack Lynch's Eighteenth- Century E-Text Page
Adriana Craciun's Women Romantic-Era Writers
Project Electra: An Electronic Resource Base of Women's Writing and Images of Women, 1780-1830
The Sheffield Hallam Corvey Homepage
Portraits of Women Writers, 1775-1820
"Crossing Old Barriers: The
WorldWideWeb, Academia, and the Romantic Novel." Romanticism On the Net 10 (May 1998): n.
pag. Online. Internet. (date of access) Go to Cathy's Scholarship Page
Page
This is a masculine-centered tale that is fairly realistic about being set
in medieval England. There are jousts and men in armor, feisty barons on noble steeds, etc. The
tale has real ghosts who want some serious justice and get it! It is a short work in the "fragment"
style.
This novel is so mainstream now it seems hardly necessary to comment on it; scholarly journals
have devoted entire issues to critical analyses of this novel. The novel is told by a passive
aggressive young woman who is trapped in a society that gives her no-win, double-bind rules about
life. Evelina is a real woman; at time she is a sweet girl, a snob, a catty teenager, a craven coward,
an innocent victim in a frightening world of rapists and prostitutes, a clever commentator on a crazy
society ...
[see this page on Munster County, Ireland]
This is a very short novel that is more interesting for its ideas than its writing. The heroine is an
older woman who uses her money to build a utopia which includes university schooling for women.
There is also a grand masquerade ball on the estate that gives a marvelous sense of the scale and
grandeur of the great country homes. UPDATE: I've been rereading this novel recently and have
found the minor characters much more fascinating upon a second look. They are very
unconventional women who tell their individual stories, with romantic triangles, duel, separations,
etc. If you look at the "novel" as a frame for smaller tales rather than one coherent narrative, the
structure begins to make much more sense.
This is one of the greatest novels ever written in my opinion. In the 1780s
and 1790s, characters in other novels read Cecilia and praise the book.
Burney's diaries are full of comments from readers as well, letting us know
just about everyone who was anyone in those days read the novel. The novel
is so rich and so full of vivid, creative, memorable characters that it is
difficult to convey in a few words the power of the book. At one point during
my first reading of the novel, I hurled the book from me across the room in
a burst of passion about a plot twist--in the eight or nine years that I've
been reading since then, I've never again experienced such enraged engagement
with a novel.
This is a tale of the two daughters that Mary Queen of Scots had in a secret
marriage (need I add this is a historical fantasy?) The two daughters are
raised in a hidden underground cave (the recess) and manage to get out and
make the two worst marriages possible. (Spoiler warning) One ends up in jail
in the Caribbean, and the other is driven mad by the malice and machinations
of Queen Elizabeth I. To extend the misery to three generations, a daughter
of one of the two hidden heroines goes on also to have marital woes. Lee isn't
realistic, but the novel is powerful, gothic, and at times surrealistic. It
was a huge bestseller. Ayer Company writes of this book: "This novel marked
the beginning of the resurgence in historical fiction, blending the atmosphere
of supernatural terror with the distinct panorama of history and chivalry."
[quote taken from www.scry.com/ayer/gothic/4413930.HTM in 2000--now a defunct
link]
Crusading knights and the cross-dressing women who love them ... Ayer Company
writes of this book: "This purports to be `an old English tale' and `the first
literary production of a young lady,' who very obviously draws upon Sophia
Lee's The Recess and Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. This novel
is of interest both for its rarity and typicality. It expresses the dual taste
of its time for historical and for oriental fiction. Nonetheless, it experiments
with those themes and techniques which shaped into bases for Gothic `classics'
during the 1790s and beyond. It further offers insights into the climate that
led to the making of Gothic masterpieces in the next few decades." [abstract
from www.scry.com/ayer/gothic/4413949.HTM in 2000, now a defunct link] Sadly
in contrast to this abstract, I mostly enjoyed the novel for the female character
who cross- dressed to be with the man she loved and the huge jumps in local
from England to the Mediterranean.
This was an international bestseller and is still a great read. The scene
opens with the heroine splattered with blood. She thinks she has murdered
her father who tried to rape her. Need I say more about the book? That's a
plot that would still be a bestseller today. The heroine is befriended by
a kind-hearted vegitarian, yes, vegitarian.
This book made Charlotte Smith's fortune and reputation and was followed by
about a book a year until the end of the decade. Unfortunately the quality
of the books to follow often wasn't as good. This is an awesome book about
a woman stalked by a rich, good-looking, well-connected man who is an insensitive
jerk. Emmeline is able to see this and cares more for her female friends until
the hero enters the novel. Emmeline's female friends are anything but conventional--one
has an adulterous affair and a baby out of wedlock, and another leaves her
husband because he is a financial idiot (he tries to use old wigs as fertilizer!)
Big, long, and full of detail of life in 1788, Emmeline is a good read.
Unless of course you are a modern novel lover like the famed modern novelist
who wrote the introduction to the Pandora edition and feels that maybe--if
you accept that the novel is trashy soap opera--the book is worth buying more
than a salad. The salad argument struck me as just another reason why I can't
relate to modern authors ...
This novel is almost always read for its parallels to Mary Wollstonecraft's
real life. Its heroine is clearly from a severely dysfunctional family and
all the wonderful jargon of twentieth-century clinical psychology can be applied
to this novel with ease. Mary (the character) is an obsessive woman who fixates
on people, who are dying, and binds up all her happiness in them. She isn't
fussy about the sex of the people she obsesses on.
If you've only read the later Radcliffe, you are in for a surprise--this is
a much faster-paced novel, full of action. Secret tunnels, women in locked
rooms, battles, blood, etc. keep the plot rolling.
To anyone who has lived or lives in New York, this look at the New York of the late eighteenth-
century has a particular fascination. This is an epistolary novel featuring an exchange of letters
between an unhappy wife and her unmarried friend. In one of the weirdest scenes, a group of
ladies in upstate New York are in a field reading Frances Burney's Cecilia and drinking
tea when some Indians come and take the tea pot and do a dance before the women.
When I taught this novel in my Women Writers
course at Cal State SB, I listed as key events to motivate my students' reading:
" The Narrative Frame; The Mystery of the Southern Part of the Castle; A Stepmother's
Jealousy; Love; A Forced Marriage; An Escape Attempt; A Wound; Imprisonment;
A Pursuit; Banditti; Female Friendship; The Abbey; A Nun's Tale; Abate vs.
Marquis; A Rescue; Another Rescue; The Marquis' Secret; Murders." The novel
owes a lot to Stephanie Genlis' Adele et Theodore, ou Lettres sur l'education,
which had English editions published in 1783, 1784, 1788, and 1796.
This tale of love triangles rewrites in a feminist way Jean Jacques Rousseau's international
bestseller, La
nouvelle Heloise. The novel includes poems, descriptions of sublime scenery, and
satiric portraits of London's social climbers. One of my favorite scenes is the attempt to give a
fashionable card party in a room too small with servants most incompetent. It's a comic gem!
This is a fascinating novel in two parts, the second written to make the shocking first one
acceptable. It's a little sad we have to have part II which offers moral correction to Part I but
making some of our favorite characters suffer. Part I is the tale of the vivid, feminist,
controversial mother while part II is the tale of the virtuous, victimized, much more boring
daughter. Still both have vivid characters and scenes well worth reading. The hero of part I is a
Roman Catholic priest, an unconventional choice that makes for extra titillation. The
masquerade scene in Part I is wonderful and much discussed in literary criticism.
This is a fun novel, one of the first
novels of the 1790s I ever read. It's a classic gothic with bands of marauding strangers, wolves,
knives, kidnapped heroines in nightgowns, sinister father-lover-villains, love trysts in the French
woods, a romantic soldier as hero, and an attempted seduction via the senses in a chateaux made
for decadent love.
This short, sad novel is for those who like tragedy
and like it based on real life. Most introductions cover the parallels to real life that can be traced
in the novel. Patriarchy, the double standard, and women's lack of education and opportunity
are all obvious in this tale.
This is a fun, fast read
that has the heroine moving all across Europe. There is murder, the heroine is actually stabbed
at
one point, and among the characters are an evil uncle out to seduce his niece, an abused wife,
and
some pirates.
This book is designed to create a bleak,
desolate tone (a la Wuthering Heights), and it does so by describing the heroine's gradually
increasing suffering and oppression. The novel, like so many of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Homes stories, exposes the vices that can flourish in the lonely, isolated British manor. The
hero's
sufferings come as a blast of fresh air and relief in the novel: Orlando goes to fight on the British
side in the American revolution and ends up wounded with several Indians in a rather
inaccurately
described American landscape.
This is a didactic tale told with humor about two young female friends.
This is a tragic tale of sexual
discrimination. There are some key differences in names of the characters depending on the
edition
you read. This is one of the classic epic family tales in which one side of the family prospers and
the other suffers.
The great gothic
classic,
one that kept Jane Austen's Catherine up all night in Northanger Abbey. The
opening is pastoral and didactic, but soon the novel turns into an exploration of lyrical,
sexualized
terror. You think the novel can't maintain the level of dreamlike, romantic nightmare nor its
sexually charged atmosphere; but as you move from a vast abbey in the woods, to a surreal
Venice,
to the castle where rape and torture seem but a page away, the tension builds.
A
weak novel, but the treatment
of
slavery and suicide is fascinating. This is a sequel to Smith's big hit of 1793, The Old
Manor
House.{see her portrait}
This is Edgeworth's first work, mostly interesting to me for the exchange
of letters between Caroline and Julia, a short tale of seduction and ruin.
The early part concerns two men's debate on women, literature, reading, and
writing.
Wildly dramatic end adds some punch to this novel that analyzes education
and cultural notions of what is "natural" and what is "civilized."
Wonderfully fun read--the talking skull that is a hoax, an abandoned baby
in a storm, the abandoned wife, the innocent recruited by a brothel, the kindly
old man that keeps stomping on his wig, a duel, a rape attempt, a "ghost"--need
I say more?
A tale of the sufferings of two generations of a French family.
The heroine must survive the evil suitor, an earthquake, imprisonment in a
lonely castle, a pirate ship, a husband's jealousy, and madness!
The novel of a heroine who is charming, giddy, and wants so desperately to please father,
mother,
brother, sisters, uncle, lovers, and female friends that she ends up nearly killing herself because
of
the various disasters that overtake her family and friends. Vivid, rich individual characters;
masterful scenes that amaze; rich social satire; clever exposure of the double standard of British
society: all mix in this huge novel full of "God's plenty."
This novel is
actually sometimes mistakenly put in the history
section of the library, so double check those card catalogues. The visiting Hindoo's
interpretation
of the English mania for cards as a form of religion is one of the best sections of the book.
I've only started
this novel, so I can't recommend it yet other than to say it starts with your basic pastoral bliss
and
suddenly enter glamorous strangers from London ...
One of my favorite eighteenth-century novels. It was a huge
best
seller until the end of the nineteenth century, so often you can pick up cheap nineteenth-century
editions of this out-of-print masterpiece. Amanda is a heroine that appeals to modern women--
she survives rapists, stalkers, abusive employers, gothic horrors, false friends, psychological
blackmail, etc. as she adventures through Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and England. Her sexy
brother,
the soldier, also gets a good bit of attention from the plot.
In my opinion, this is Smith's greatest novel--others might argue for Emmeline, The
Old Manor House, or Desmond--but these, while good works, to me lack the style,
mood, tone, and social satire that distinguishes Marchmont from Smith's other works.
When
I hear certain period pieces of music, I find myself visualizing the lonely beach scenes from
Marchmont. But the novel is more than moments of sublime or melancholy meditation--
its exposé of the sexism and double binds in the legal and penal systems is very similar to
Dickens' social critique of these systems in Bleak House. The hero's role in the French
revolution and the heroine's experiences in a seaside resort also convey unique pictures of
different
aspects of the times.
This is an epistolary tale written in a rather crude literary style. The novel uses letters to make
moral
points about flirting and its inevitable path to illicit sex and damnation. It is quite easy to get a
copy
of this novel which has been promoted as an early "American" novel, but I think it is one of the
more inferior works upon this list.
It is difficult to get all of the Tales, but several have been reprinted here and there,
including
several by the defunct series Mothers of the Novel by Pandora and a few by AMS Reprints. The
tales are presented in a frame like that of Chaucer's Tales at first, but later other motifs
are
used to link the stories together, such as all the tales of people in a boarding house. Sophia Lee's
"The Two Emilys" and "Pembroke" are contemporary tales but full of Gothic elements and plot
twists. "Pembroke" also features some realistic military scenes. Harriet Lee's "Kruitzner" was
praised by Byron and typically receives more critical attention than other tales in the book--it
does
indeed catch the feeling of German tales and Goethe. Harriet Lee's "Julia" is another response
to
Rousseau's Julie.
Some see this as Radcliffe's greatest. It is
full of the Inquisition, evil religious figures of every sort, and great picturesque and sublime
scenery descriptions. Vivid comic servants and an independent, self-employed heroine add to the
enjoyment of the novel.
Fascinating tale of two sisters--one who is involved in a very romantic friendship with another
woman. In discussing this female friendship, the novel seems clearly to be referring to a lesbian
subtext. The novel is extremely funny in its satire, and many speak of it as a model for Austen's
Sense and Sensibility.
This is a second-rate novel that brings some first-rate fun. There
are some great scenes in this novel: a heroine foils a rape attempt by strangling the weakling
lord; a masculine, hunting woman has a heart of gold; great masquerade scenes; an evil woman
who gets a sexual disease; a suicide attempt on the cliffs above the sea; stagecoach encounters;
attempted kidnapping foiled by a gun-welding woman ... Good Stuff!
This is a classic
gothic
in the Radcliffe tradition, set in France. The French chateaux descriptions are beautiful. There is
a wonderfully scary chase scene where the heroine's dress catches on a nail.
This is a "two-story" tale, half about the mother and half about the daughter; it is a classic gothic
in the Radcliffe tradition. There are manuscripts, secret marriages, armed men on horseback,
religious figures, scary mansions with rusty bolts and locks and trunks and bones ...
A strong feminist tale in which the heroine is raped.
This novel lacks the humor of West's earlier two and is much more didactic. the
tale
of a seduced wife, it is in part a response to Rousseaus' Julie, complete with a small
utopia
village the heroine establishes prior to her ruin.
A Comment from Dr. Martin Porter that conveys the
appeal of this short novel: "I came to Castle Rackrent imagining (from the title) it was
going to be some Gothic romance, much inferior to [Edgeworth's 1801 novel] Belinda.
Instead, I found
myself reading a masterpiece of Irish fiction. The book is amazing. The
colloquial Irish style makes it feel completely modern, like Flann O'Brien.
It's extremely funny, even while it's so angry. As an exposure of the
British ill-treatment of Ireland, it is like Swift's "Modest Proposal," but in
the way it shows the exploiters being corrupted and destroyed alongside the
exploited, it reminded me of Orwell's Burmese Days. It's satirical, but
there's so much human warmth in it, it is not merely satire. Basically it's
one of those books that seems like a starting point to everything else."
Roche reveals her familiarity with Wales and the Welsh dialect in this novel. Like her
masterpiece,
Children of the Abbey, this novel takes an unprotected heroine through several countries
(Wales, London, the English countryside, and France) blending satire, drama, sentiment, and the
Gothic. The novel is much weaker than Children of the Abbey; however, the section
involving the heroine's near entrapment in the world of London's more expensive prostitutes/
courtesans/kept mistresses is quite good.
This novel is extremely funny at times. The politics of the novel are conservative and anti-
Wollstonecraftian, but ambiguous characters and plot elements leave open the question of where
Hamilton stands on many feminist issues.
A truly great novel!
Edgeworth
produces a novel that has a cast of memorable characters and manages to capture both the allure
and
the evil nature of London society at the turn of the century. The novel offers commentary on
interracial relationships, educational systems, gambling, fashion, the rights of women, courtship,
current medical treatments for breast cancer, women's friendships, breast feeding, and a host of
other things. Don't be mislead by Harriot Freke, the clearly evil exaggeration of a
Wollstonecraft
feminist: Edgeworth is not completely conservative and uses her obvious attack on "Frekish"
feminist to hide a lot of criticism of gender relationships in 1801. The novel is still pleasurable
upon
the second and third rereading; Lady Delacour is one of the great women characters in the
history
of the novel.
This is a fun Gothic novel, interesting for its vegetarianism and for the child
abuse described in the early scenes.
This epistolary novel tells the tale of how
two
insensitive, superficial men reform themselves under the influence of the extremely ugly heiress
Olivia Campbell and her beautiful friend. Plot does indeed avoid the cliched ending, but it isn't
enough to save the story from some tedium, especially if you're familiar with common themes of
the time. Strong echoes of
Clarissa run through
the book, but the book fails to rise to the moral glory and sadistic depths that Richardson hits.
On
the other hand, it isn't a million words long either ... The use of cliched subplots (for 1801) was
one
of the book's biggest weaknesses: the ghost that isn't a ghost; the persecuted, beautiful cottager;
the
mysterious
orphan, the contrast of the faithful old retainer and the money-grubbing, self-aggrandizing,
ladder-climbing modern servant, etc. If these plots aren't familiar to you, you will enjoy this
introduction to some of the common plots of the period.
I highly recommend this novel. The heroine of Mary Brunton's Self-Control (1810-1)
loves the hero of this novel and so do I. How can you resist the tall, handsome, brave hero who
fights bravely in battle, goes into exile and fights to help his horse and general in the face of
poverty? He also defends women in the streets and helps children. He makes a living teaching
languages and selling drawings, resisting the seductive efforts of assorted women who long to
make him their play-thing. There is some great satire of London society, as well as a vivid
account of spousal abuse and the lack of legal recourse for women. The novel opens with
extremely realistic battle scenes of the destruction of Poland in 1796, based on first-person
accounts told to the author by a number of soldiers and the great Polish general himself, who
Napoleon offered the throne. The book was banned by Napoleon and huge success in its day.
This novel's plot is adapted from the life of Mary Wollstonecraft in many ways. The heroine's
relationships to men echo the problems of Mary Wollstonecraft's personal life. In addition,
issues such as women's education, women's employment, sexual harassment, and inter-racial
relationships are treated in this work.
In this unusual Gothic
novel, all of the main characters (and most of the minor ones as well) are evil. The murderous,
adulterous, corrupting actions of two courtesans of Venice make up the bulk of the plot. The
alliance of the Moor with evil is a racist stereotype. Ironically, the Moor's role is less to
stimulate
Victoria, the evil "heroine," to crime, than to counsel her to commit less obvious or punishable
crimes.
The good
Leonora tries to help a fallen woman regain her reputation and is repaid by the fallen woman
seducing her own husband.
This is probably Lady Morgan's most famous novel, and she was often called by
the name of the heroine of this novel, Glorvina. It is a dramatic tale told in letters that is fairly
short,
but the long, complex footnotes by the author defending Irish culture and contributing to the
Ossian
debate are rather annoying and distract from the pleasure of the story.
This novel includes powerful depictions of realistic battle scenes, a trait of both Porter sisters'
works. They received first-hand accounts of battles from generals and many distinguished war
heroes in their home in London. The brothers are both handsome and get involved with a
number of women. Secret admirers, battles, blood, veiled women, fires, and attempted
seductions all are featured in the plot.
A fascinating
saga of a handicapped, housekeeping heroine, full of vivid details of domestic life in Scotland.
Ennui
is a wonderful tale
of
the reformation of a spoiled
nobleman, involving lots of Irish humor and satire of British and Irish high society.
Manoeuvering is a satiric look at opportunistic social climbing.
Coelebs is a dull dog as even
folks back in 1809 realized, but some of the minor (i.e. immoral) characters are a lot of fun.
Some
of the dialogues are fascinating, and we do get a lot of hints about life in 1809 from all of the
descriptions of the good heroine's household duties, gardening, and charity work.
This is a fun, short read in the predictable Gothic mode.
The heroine paints historical pictures to earn
money and is pursued by a raping, murdering, kidnapping jerk who sends her off to the
American
wilderness. She escapes in a canoe and goes over a waterfall--don't look for much realism
here.
This is a
novel about William Wallace,
but, as with Mel Gibson's Braveheart, don't expect mere history. In this version,
Wallace
is involved in a love triangle after his wife dies.
It's hard to imagine someone not knowing the plot of this delightful tale
of two different sisters. This is the great Austen in one of her best.
This is a charming novel harmed only by the belief that daughters of "bad women" should be
punished for the sins of the mother by being considered unacceptable to marry (hence a sexual
corrupt mother's daughters are doomed to repeat her vices or become even more corrupt as they
are denied access to legal sexual relationships). Despite this conservative viewpoint, the novel
features a number of admirable females and is very funny. It satirizes London snobbery and
Anglo-Irish corruption and pretentiousness. The novel is full of vivid Irish scenes that capture
the complexity of the relationships between the Irish and the English.
Edgeworth here tackles the issue of French émigrés to England and the difficulty of
the French aristocracy dealing with poverty and charity.
This is one of the more moral and didactic novels of
Edgeworth, and hence to me not so interesting. It also is one of the few of her works that has a
pretty dark, depressing, though very moral, ending.
This tale of five sisters and their quest
for husbands has long been a beloved classic.
Once one of the more popular Austen
novels, this one has lately been disparaged for its "wimpy" or "pathetic" heroine. The message
of the novel is not very appealing in this generation: glamorous, fun, popular people can be
morally corrupt and destroy you. The novel involves private theatricals, like Burney's
Wanderer and Edgeworth's Patronage. The year for novels featuring plays is
1814!
A great novel written in the first person which tells of a spoiled young woman's journey to
maturity
and love. Great details of the London season and Scottish city and country life. Novel covers
great
themes such as jealousy, pride, suicide, sexual harassment, the oppression of the poor, true
friendship, and true love. The novel includes also a great ball scene, a fashionable auction scene,
a wonderful masquerade scene, a scary madhouse scene, and some vivid depictions of the horror
of poverty.
This is Burney's least popular novel, but it is a novel worth reading. It is amazingly full of
life--we meet people of all social levels and philosophical approaches: saintly Bishops; rich
heiresses; lewd libertines; abusive employers; crazed, obsessive, suicidal rad femmes; business
women; eccentric philanthropers; evil, bloody killers of the French Revolution ... the list could
go on and on.
This is a wonderful long novel that is the epic tale of two families and their differing fates in
society. We get to know all the children of the two families, and the scope of the novel covers a
wide range of society from country poverty to high life. We meet doctors, clergymen,
politicians, and diplomats and go from the royal presence to the prison.
This is a fairly typical gothic. There is a great
masquerade scene and lots of backstabbing dagger action.
Harrington is a novel that tries to combat prejudice against Jewish people. The novel is
frank about the discrimination against Jews and tries to promote tolerance. There is a great
scene involving a London mob as well as some good scenes exposing the vices of British
schooling for boys.
Marriage is an enjoyable, funny novel dealing
with the life of twin girls, born to a silly London beauty who eloped with a Scotsman. He was
disinherited, and poverty in Scotland is too much for the beauty to endure. She leaves with one
twin, Adelaide Julia, and leaves the other, Mary, to be raised in Scotland by her aunt, Mrs.
Douglas, and her three great-aunts: Miss Jacky, Miss Grizzy, and Miss Nicky. Of course, when
Mary is ready for marriage, she reunites with her sister and fun complications occur which of
course contrast a fashionable London education and a good, moral Scottish education.
