Best of
19th-Century

2000

The Plays of Oscar Wilde


Oscar Wilde - 2000
    The combination of dazzling wit, subtle social criticism, sumptuous settings and the theme of a guilty secret proved a winner, both here and in his next three plays, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and his undisputed masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest. This volume includes all Wilde's plays from his early tragedy Vera to the controversial Salome and the little known fragments, La Sainte Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy. The edition affords a rare chance to see Wilde's best known work in the context of his entire dramatic output, and to appreciate plays which have hitherto received scant critical attention.

Lancashire Lass


Anna Jacobs - 2000
    Saul is sending Josiah as far away as he can and hopes never to see him again. Josiah's wife is ill and knows she can never return to England.What will these people make of their new lives? As it often does, migration causes other people to follow the group out to the Peel Region of Western Australia, bringing new complications in their lives. Some will die, some will succeed, and others will move on from Western Australia, either back to England or across to Victoria. For Liza and Benedict, the central characters, there will be cruel disappointments before they can win their way through to a happier life.

Emily


Val Wood - 2000
    A loving and hard-working child, she goes into service when she is twelve at the house of Roger Francis, whose connections with Emily's own family prove to be closer than she could ever have guessed. Roger's daughter Deborah takes a great fancy to Emily, and when Emily has moved to another household in Hull she finds that her new employer's son Hugo is to marry Deborah. But Hugo, too, has taken a fancy to Emily, and dishonours and then betrays her to such an extent that she is imprisoned, tried and deported to Australia. But just when her fortunes seem to be at their lowest, Emily is reunited with the one man who can save her from her miserable existence and bring her wealth and happiness. Praise for Val Wood:'Wonderfully fully-fleshed characters are the mainstay of [Val Wood's] stories' Peterborough TelegraphA gripping saga' The People's Friend

Lord Byron: The Major Works


Lord Byron - 2000
    Although his private life shocked his contemporaries his poetry was immensely popular and influential, especially in Europe. This comprehensive edition includes the complete texts of his two poetic masterpieces Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan, as well as the dramatic poems Manfred and Cain. There are many other shorter poems and part of the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. In addition there is a selection from Byron's inimitable letters, extracts from his journals and conversations, as well as more formal writings.

Sign-Talker: The Adventure of George Drouillard on the Lewis and Clark Expedition


James Alexander Thom - 2000
    Thom's new novel is an enthralling adventure with fascinating real-life characters--and a heart-grabbing narrative that casts a vivid light on a momentous chapter in American history.Flint and Steel begins just after the Louisiana Purchase. Thomas Jefferson has sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to penetrate the newly acquired territory, journey up the Missouri River, cross the Rocky Mountains, and reach the glimmering sea in the far West. To survive, the two captains need an extraordinary hunter who will be able to provide the expedition with fresh game, and a sign-talker to communicate with the native tribes. They choose George Drouillard. It is Drouillard, an actual historical figure, who becomes our eyes and ears on this unforgettable odyssey.Drouillard, a metis raised among the Shawnee, cannot fathom what drives the two men. Nor can he help but admire their ingenuity and courage as they tackle the journey into the unknown. Along the way, he watches as they shrewdly shape and discipline their force, adding French-Canadian rivermen--to guide the expedition up the Missouri--and an Indian woman, Sacagawea, who will play a crucial role in negotiations with the Western tribes.After plunging into an unforgiving land and near madness, the triumphant achievement of two captains will be eclipsed by an overwhelming tragedy that will touch not only Meriwether Lewis and the frontier tribes but George Drouillard himself. A magnificent tale told with intelligence and insight, Flint and Steel is full of song and suffering, humor and pathos. James Alexander Thom has created the rarest reading experience: one that entertains us even as it shows us a new vision of our nation, our past, and ourselves.From the Hardcover edition.

Love's Bounty


Rosanne Bittner - 2000
    With Love's Bounty, she continues to delight readers with the passionate tale of a proud woman and the reckless bounty hunter who steals her heart. Life hasn’t been easy on young Callie Hobbs. After her father’s sudden death and her mother’s murder, there isn’t much left for her on the outskirts of Rawlins. Alone with a ranch to run, Callie could sell it all, cut her losses, and find a suitor in town. But Callie knows only one thing will bring her peace: Seeing her mother’s killers hung. To find them, she turns to the most ruthless bounty hunter on this side of the country: Christian Mercy. Distant and brooding, Christian Mercy is far from the ideal travel companion. But as their journey unfolds, Callie finds herself falling for those blue eyes that flicker with something deeper than she could have ever anticipated. He wants redemption. She wants revenge. And as they close in on their targets, Callie and Chris bite back a fear worse than death. Could their love for one another douse the burning rage that keeps them going?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Poems and Other Writings


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - 2000
    His works were extraordinary bestsellers for their era, achieving fame both here and abroad. Now, for the first time in over 25 years. Poems and Other Writings offers a full-scale literary portrait of America's greatest popular poet. Here are the poems that created an American mythology: Evangeline in the forest primeval, Hiawatha by the shores of Gitchee Gumee, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, the wreck of the Hesperus, the village blacksmith under the spreading chestnut tree, the strange courtship of Miles Standish, the maiden Priscilla and the hesitant John Alden; verses, like "A Psalm of Life" and the "The Children's Hour", whose phrases and characters have become part of the culture. Erudite and fluent in many languages, Longfellow was endlessly fascinated with the byways of history and the curiosities of legend. His many poems on literary themes, such as his moving homages to Dante and Chaucer, his verse translations from Lope de Vega, Heinrich Heine, and Michelangelo, and his ambitious verse dramas, notably The New England Tragedies (also complete), are remarkable in their range and ambition. As a special feature, this volume restores to print Longfellow's novel Kavanagh, a study of small-town life and literary ambition that was praised by Emerson as an important contribution to the development of American fiction. A selection of essays rounds out of the volume and provides testimony to Longfellow's concern with creating an American national literature.

Sharpe Companion: A Detailed Historical And Military Guide To Bernard Cornwell's Bestselling Series Of Sharpe Novels


Mark Adkin - 2000
    The adventures of Richard Sharpe and co. in the Peninsular War and on the Indian continent have thrilled hundreds of thousands of readers over the years and over sixteen books.Now comes the book that Cornwell’s fans have been waiting for: the definitive guide to the historical and military background to the characters and events of the Sharpe novels.Compulsively readable, exhaustively detailed, with a chapter devoted to each book and a complete glossary of characters, both real and fictional, this guide will be a must for every devoted reader of Sharpe. Complete with black and white plates of famous battle scenes and characters, exquisite line drawings and complete maps of every battle and skirmish fought in by Richard Sharpe, The Sharpe Companion is a wonderful and necessary addition to every Sharpe library.

At Home with Beatrix Potter: The Creator of Peter Rabbit


Susan Denyer - 2000
    Yet few in America are aware of the role she played in protecting some of England's most beautiful landscapes and in designing romantic interiors and a lovely garden at Hill Top, her beloved Lake District farmhouse.Taking the reader through her picturesque house and the breathtaking scenery around it that inspired many of her famous stories, this charming book is the first to look at the intimate connection between the English countryside and Potter's work. Her own exquisite sketches and watercolors, as well as personal ephemera, appear alongside specially commissioned full-color photographs, revealing a home filled with treasured old furniture and beautiful objects and celebrating an artist-storyteller whose legacy as a conservationist at last receives the attention it deserves.

Queen Victoria: A Personal History


Christopher Hibbert - 2000
    His Victoria is not only the formidable, demanding, capricious queen of popular imagination—she is also often shy, diffident, and vulnerable, prone to giggling fits and crying jags. Often censorious when confronted with her mother's moral lapses, she herself could be passionately sensual, emotional, and deeply sentimental. Ascending to the throne at age eighteen, Victoria ruled for sixty-four years—an astounding length for any world leader. During her reign, she dealt with conflicts ranging from royal quarrels to war in Crimea and rebellion in India. She saw monarchs fall, empires crumble, new continents explored, and England grow into a dominant global and industrial power. This personal history is a compelling look at the complex woman whom, until now, we only thought we knew.

Edge of Honor


Gilbert Morris - 2000
    Quentin Larribee is a surgeon, but in the confusion at the end of the Civil War, his healing hands brought death to an enemy soldier. To ease his troubled conscience, he visits the man’s impoverished widow, only to find himself falling in love. Now he is torn between two choices: a bright medical future with his wealthy fiancée in New York City, or an impossible love with a woman who knows nothing of his terrible secret. In this unforgettable novel, good is found in the unlikeliest places and God’s unseen hand weaves a masterful tapestry of human hearts and lives.

All Together in One Place


Jane Kirkpatrick - 2000
    A loving marriage, a well-organized home, the pleasure of planting an early spring garden--these are the carefully-tended dreams that sustain her heart and nourish her soul.But when her husband of two years sells the homestead and informs her that they are heading west, Mazy's life is ripped down the middle like a poorly mended sheet forgotten in a midwestern storm. Her love is tried, her boundaries stretched, and the fabric of her faith tested. At the same time, she and eleven extraordinary women are pulled toward an uncertain destiny--one that binds them together through reluctance and longing and into acceptance and renewal. Based on an actual 1852 Oregon Trail incident, All Together in One Place, Book One in the Kinship and Courage series, speaks to the strength in every woman and celebrates the promise of hope that unfailingly blooms amidst tragedy and challenge.

Slave Narratives


William L. AndrewsSojourner Truth - 2000
    The works collected in this volume present unflinching portrayals of the cruelty and degradation of slavery while testifying to the African-American struggle for freedom and dignity. They demonstrate the power of the written word to affirm a person's—and a people's—humanity in a society poisoned by racism. Slave Narratives shows how a diverse group of writers challenged the conscience of a nation and, through their expression of anger, pain, sorrow, and courage, laid the foundations of the African-American literary tradition.This volume collects ten works published between 1772 and 1864:Two narratives by James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (1772) and Olaudah Equiano (1789) recount how they were taken from Africa as children and brought across the Atlantic to British North America.The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831) provides unique insight into the man who led the deadliest slave uprising in American history.The widely read narratives by the fugitive slaves Frederick Douglass (1845), William Wells Brown (1847), and Henry Bibb (1849) strengthened the abolitionist cause by exposing the hypocrisies inherent in a slaveholding society ostensibly dedicated to liberty and Christian morality.The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) describes slavery in the North while expressing the eloquent fervor of a dedicated woman.Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860) tells the story of William and Ellen Craft's subversive and ingenious escape from Georgia to Philadelphia.Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) is Harriet Jacobs's complex and moving story of her prolonged resistance to sexual and racial oppression.The narrative of the "trickster" Jacob Green (1864) presents a disturbing story full of wild humor and intense crueltyTogether, these works fuse memory, advocacy, and defiance into a searing collective portrait of American life before emancipation.Slave Narratives contains a chronology of events in the history of slavery, as well as biographical and explanatory notes and an essay on the texts.The editors of this volume are William L. Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities at Harvard University.

Soldier Sahibs: The Men Who Made the North-West Frontier


Charles Allen - 2000
    Known collectively as Henry Lawrence's young men, each had distinguished himself in the East India Company's wars in the Punjab before going on to make his name as a political on the Frontier - Herbert Edwardes, who pacified Bannu; John Nicholson, a forebear of the author, who became the terror of the Sikhs as Nikkal Seyn; Uncle James Abbot of Hazara, and many others.

The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love


Alice A. Carter - 2000
    Nicknamed by their mentor, the famous illustrator Howard Pyle, The Red Rose Girls lived and worked at a picturesque former inn of the same name in an idyllic suburb on Philadelphia's Main Line. In the course of their years together they formed intimate bonds of friendship and love and enriched each other's professional lives by sharing ideas and inspiration. Smith and Green were prolific illustrators, celebrated for their work in children's books and periodicals such as Scribner's, Collier's, Harper's; and Oakley was a painter and muralist of national reputation whose work graces the interior of the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg. Full-color illustrations and wonderful period photographs bring their work and milieu to life.

Jungle Man: The Autobiography Of Major P. J. Pretorius C.M.G. D.S.O. and Bar


P.J. Pretorius - 2000
    Pretorius also gives the first full account of the search for the German cruiser Königsberg which had sunk the Pegasus at Zanzibar and then gone into hiding in the Rufiji delta.“I have never seen a more thrilling story of a hunter’s life. It is full of almost unbelievable incidents, of reckless daring, and of hair-breadth escapes. If one knew the writer the interest increases, for he was a quiet, gentle, unassuming person in appearance. What fire lay hidden under those quiet features and that gentle manner! His very person seemed to be a camouflage.”—Foreword by J. C. Smuts

Covered with Glory: The 26th North Carolina Infantry at Gettysburg


Rod Gragg - 2000
    In July 1863 the regiment's eight-hundred-plus troops--young men from North Carolina's mountains, farmlands, and hamlets--were thrust into the firestorm of Gettysburg, the greatest battle ever fought in North America. By the time the fighting ended, the 26th North Carolina had suffered what some authorities would calculate to be the highest casualties of any regiment in the Civil War.Following a bone-wearying march into Pennsylvania with the rest of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, the soldiers of the 26th found themselves in ferocious, almost face-to-face combat with some of the hardest-fighting troops in the Federal army--the heralded Iron Brigade. The bloody contest on McPherson's Ridge produced some of Gettysburg's fiercest fighting, and the troops involved--men from North Carolina, Michigan, and Indiana--established an enduring legacy of American fortitude and will.On Gettysburg's third day of battle, the 26th North Carolina was placed in the front ranks of Pickett's Charge. Following a massive artillery barrage, the tattered regiment was commanded to go the distance in what would prove to be the most famous assault of the war. At one point, as he watched the men of the 26th in battle, Brigadier General James J. Pettigrew dispatched a message to the regiment's commander: "Tell him his regiment haas covered itself with glory today."The story of the 26th North Carolina at Gettysburg is an American saga of duty performed in the worst of warfare. It unfolds through the lives of key characters--the regiment'stwenty-one year old commander, Colonel Henry K. Burgwyn, Jr.; its second-in-command, twenty-six-year-old farmer-turned-lieutenant colonel John R. Lane; twenty-two-year-old Major John Jones, who had abandoned his college studies to join the army; and common soldiers like Private Jimmie Moore, a North Carolina mountain boy who had gone to war at the age of fifteen."Covered In Glory is an intensely personal narrative based on exhaustive research into the diaries, letters, memoirs, and official records of the men who struggled on the bloody field at Gettysburg. It is a powerful, moving account of American courage and sacrifice.

Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and Its Symbols, 1650-1815


Allen Ludwig - 2000
    This carefully researched, beautifully illustrated work was the first to consider this art in depth as a meaningful aesthetic-spiritual expression. It is reissued for today's readers, with a new preface outlining changes in the field since the book appeared in 1966.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Volume 3


Arthur Conan Doyle - 2000
    Watson's patient is involved in a bizarre incident that leaves even Holmes baffled.'The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor': Lord St. Simon's wedding day ends in disaster when his American bride disappears and her clothes are found in a lake. Holmes knows the apparent murder is nothing more than a cover for the truth.'The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet': 'Holmes, here is a madman coming along.' But the terrified banker Watson sees isn't mad, but the victim in a tortuous affair involving a costly coronet, a lover and a wronged son.'The Adventure of the Copper Beeches': A seemingly good-humoured employer offers Violet Hunter a well-paid governess position but she soon finds the house contains frightening secrets that only Holmes can uncover.

Complete Poems


Edgar Allan Poe - 2000
    ") -- A Dream -- The Happiest Day -- The Lake -- Sonnet -- to Science -- Al Aaraaf -- Romance -- To -- ("Should my Early Life Seem") -- To [Elmira] ("The Bowers") -- To the River [PO] -- To M -- ("I Heed Not") -- Fairyland [I] -- Alone -- To Isaac Lea -- Elizabeth [Rebecca] -- An Acrostic ("Elizabeth, It Is in Vain") -- Lines on Joe Locke -- Introduction -- Mysterious Star! (A New Introduction to "Al Aaraaf") -- Fairy Land [II] -- To Helen -- Israfel -- Irene and the Sleeper -- The Valley of Unrest -- The City in the Sea -- A Paean -- Epigram from Pulci -- To One in Paradise -- Hymn -- Latin Hymn -- Song of Triumph -- Enigma [On Shakespeare] -- Serenade -- To -- ("Sleep on") -- Fanny -- The Coliseum -- To Mary Starr -- To Frances S. Osgood -- To Frances -- Politian -- Parody on Drake -- May Queen Ode -- Spiritual Song -- Bridal Ballad -- To Zante -- The Haunted Palace -- Couplet from "the Fall of the House of Usher" -- Motto for "William Wilson" -- Sonnet -- Silence -- The Conqueror Worm -- Motto for the Stylus -- Motto for "The Gold-Bug" -- Lenore -- Hexameter -- To Elizabeth Winchester -- Impromptu -- Fragment of a Campaign Song -- Dream-Land -- Eulalie -- The Raven -- Lines After Elizabeth Barrett -- Epigram for Wall Street -- Impromptu: To Kate Carol -- To [Violet Vane] -- The Divine Right of Kings -- Stanzas [to F.S.O.] -- A Valentine -- Model Verses -- Deep in Earth -- To Miss Louise Olivia Hunter -- To Marie Louise Shew -- The Beloved Physician -- Holy Eyes -- To Marie Louise -- Ulalume -- An Enigma [Sarah Anna Lewis] -- The Bells -- To Helen [Whitman] -- Lines on Ale -- A Dream Within a Dream -- For Annie -- Eldorado -- To My Mother -- Annabel Lee -- App. I. Serious Rhymes in Prose -- App. II. Comic Rhymes -- App. III. Collaborations -- App. IV. Apocrypha -- App. V. Verses by Members of Poe's Family -- Annals of Poe's Life.

Broadsides: The Age of Fighting Sail, 1775-1815


Nathan Miller - 2000
    All of this and more awaits the reader who will sail through these pages, every one of which is etched with the indelible expertise and boundless enthusiasm of Nathan Miller, master of naval history.

My Name is Martha Brown


Nicola Thorne - 2000
    Among those who witnessed her death was a sixteen-year-old local lad, and the memory of her execution haunted him for the rest of his life. Writing many years later, he said: ‘I remember what a fine figure she showed against the sky as she hung in the misty rain, and how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half-round and back.’ The writer was Thomas Hardy. Martha Brown, one of a large family, was an ordinary woman of humble parentage, her father an itinerant dairyman. Very little is known about her tragic life, and she remains tantalising and elusive. It is not whether or not she did kill her husband that intrigues so much as the mystery of her origins, the tragic circumstances of her life, the injustice of her rushed trial and subsequent execution.According to contemporary accounts Martha was ‘a wonderful-looking woman with beautiful curls’, who had a propensity for choosing the wrong husband. Her first husband Bernard was twenty years her senior. Her second, John Brown, twenty years younger. Marriage to a handsome younger man could perhaps release her, a lonely widow, from a life of tedium and drudgery. But why did John Brown marry Martha? Some said it was for her money, but did the age difference which eventually led him into the arms of a much younger woman, pretty flirtatious Mary Davis, precipitate jealousy that resulted in murder if murder it was?This fine compelling novel, as well as vividly recapturing the setting of nineteenth century rural Dorset, attempts to reconstruct the story of a woman whose sad life and tragic death have much of the overtones of a Hardy heroine.

Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia: Das Allgemeine Brouillon


Novalis - 2000
    However, this translation of Das Allgemeine Brouillon, or "Universal Notebook," finally introduces him to the English-speaking world as an extraordinarily gifted philosopher in his own right and shatters the myth of him as a mere daydreaming and irrational poet. Composed of more than 1,100 notebook entries, this is easily Novalis's largest theoretical work and certainly one of the most remarkable and audacious undertakings of the "Golden Age" of German philosophy. In it, Novalis reflects on numerous aspects of human culture, including philosophy, poetry, the natural sciences, the fine arts, mathematics, mineralogy, history, and religion, and brings them all together into what he calls a "Romantic Encyclopaedia" or "Scientific Bible."Novalis's Romantic Encyclopaedia fully embodies the author's own personal brand of philosophy, "Magical Idealism." With meditations on mankind and nature, the possible future development of our faculties of reason, imagination, and the senses, and the unification of the different sciences, these notes contain a veritable treasure trove of richly poetic and philosophic thoughts.

Help Heavenward: Guidance and Strength for the Christian's Life-Journey


Octavius Winslow - 2000
    Devotional writing at its finest.

The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900


Sally Ledger - 2000
    It also included an outpouring of intellectual responses to the conflicting times from such eminent writers as T. H. Huxley, Emma Goldman, William James, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde. In this important anthology, Ledger and Luckhurst make available to students, scholars, and general readers a large body of non-literary texts which richly configure the variegated cultural history of the fin-de-siècle years. That history is here shown to inaugurate many enduring critical and cultural concerns, with sections on Degeneration, Outcast London, The Metropolis, The New Woman, Literary Debates, The New Imperialism, Socialism, Anarchism, Scientific Naturalism, Psychology, Psychical Research, Sexology, Anthropology, and Racial Science. Each section begins with an Introduction and closes with Editorial Notes that carefully situate individual texts within a wider cultural landscape.

Wordsworth: A Life


Juliet Barker - 2000
    Orphaned at a young age and dependent on the charity of unsympathetic relatives, he became the archetypal teenage rebel. Refusing to enter the Church, he went instead to Revolutionary France, where he fathered an illegitimate daughter and became a committed Republican. His poetry was as revolutionary as his politics, challenging convention in form, style, and subject, and earning him the universal derision and contempt of critics. Only the unfailing encouragement of a tightly knit group of supporters, his family, and, above all, Coleridge kept him true to his poetic vocation. In the half-century that followed his reputation was transformed. His advocacy of the importance of imagination and feeling touched a chord in an increasingly industrial, mechanistic age, and his influence was profoundly and widely felt in every sphere of life. In the last decade of his life, Rydal Mount, his home for thirty-seven years, became a place of pilgrimage, not just for the great and powerful in Church and state, but also, more touchingly, for the hundreds of ordinary people who came to pay their respects to his genius. In what is, astonishingly, the first biography of Wordsworth to treat the latter part of his life as fully as the first, Juliet Barker balances meticulous research with a readable style, and scrupulous objectivity with an understanding of her subject. She reveals not only the public figure who was courted and reviled in equal measure but also the complex, elusive, private man behind that image. Drawing on unpublished sources, she vividly re-creates the intimacy of Wordsworth's domestic circle, showing the love, laughter, loyalty, and tragedies that bound them together. Far from being the remote, cold, solitary figure of legend, Wordsworth emerges from his biography as a passionate, vibrant man who lived for his family, his poetry, and his beloved Lakeland. His legacy, as a poet and as the spiritual founder of the conservation movement, remains with us today.

Jane Morris: The Pre-Raphaelite Model of Beauty


Debra N. Mancoff - 2000
    Her unruly dark hair, lanky figure, and loose garments stood out in an age that favored petite, fair-haired women with feminine curves. Drawing on lavish portraits and rare photographs, Debra Mancoff examines Morris's image within the context of Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic ideals and Victorian standards of fashion. Part biography, part art history, and part cultural study, Jane Morris traces the beauty's rise from an eighteen-year-old working-class Oxford girl to a virtual "supermodel" for the Pre-Raphaelites, focusing on her relationships with artist-designer William Morris, whom she married in 1859, and Rossetti, with whom she shared a life-long romance.

Thoreau as Spiritual Guide: A Companion to Walden for Personal Reflection and Group Discussion


Barry M. Andrews - 2000
    Walden, one of America's classic works of non-fiction, gets a fresh examination from a faith-based and meditative perspective.

Improper Acquaintances: A clean and sweet Regency Romance


Sheila Walsh - 2000
    Perfect for fans of Georgette Heyer, Mary Balogh, Jane Aiken Hodge and Alice Chetwynd Ley. A spirited young lady and a dashing army officer encounter romance and intrigue in the high society of London and Brussels. From the moment Miss Charis Winslade meets Major Daniel Hammond during a thunderstorm, sparks fly between the pair. Despite his rakish manner and reputation, Charis can't help being drawn to the handsome major. Charis and her beloved brother journey to Brussels where they become involved in a web of intrigue. Once more, fate brings her face to face with Major Hammond, who arrives in the city on the orders of the Duke of Wellington. But Charis's hopes for love and happiness could be thwarted when Napolean escapes Elba and the shadow of Waterloo approaches. Will historic events lead Charis to lose all she holds dear? Another traditional, clean and wholesome Regency Romance from the award winning author.

Family Ties in Victorian England


Claudia Nelson - 2000
    While Queen Victoria's supporters argued that her intense commitment to her private life made her the more fit to mother her people, her critics charged that it distracted her from her public responsibilities. Here, Nelson focuses particularly on the conflicting and powerful images of family life that Victorians produced in their fiction and nonfiction--that is, on how the Victorians themselves conceived of family, which continues both to influence and to help explain visions of family today.Drawing upon a wide variety of 19th-century fiction and nonfiction, Nelson examines the English Victorian family both as it was imagined and as it was experienced. For many Victorians, family was exalted to the status of secular religion, endowed with the power of fighting the contamination of unchecked commercialism or sexuality and holding out the promise of reforming humankind. Although in practice this ideal might have proven unattainable, the many detailed 19th-century descriptions of the outlook and behavior appropriate to fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, and other family members illustrate the extent of the pressure felt by members of this society to try to live up to the expectations of their culture. Defining family to include the extended family, the foster or adoptive family, and the stepfamily, Nelson considers different roles within the Victorian household in order to gauge the ambivalence and the social anxieties surrounding them--many of which continue to influence our notions of family today.

Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930


Holly Edwards - 2000
    Published to coincide with the multimedia exhibition that opens at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and travels to the Walters Art Gallery and the Mint Museum of Art, this catalogue considers how urban, mercantile, Protestant America represented the Islamic world of the Middle East and North Africa in ways that say more about itself than the foreign culture.This gorgeously illustrated volume first looks at the use of Orientalist stereotypes by some of the country's most important high art painters of the nineteenth century: Frederic Edwin Church's treatment of the exotic terrain through a lens of deep religiosity; a more cosmopolitan reading of the harem girl by John Singer Sargent; the perfumed alternative to industrial capitalism conjured in the landscapes and market scenes of Samuel Colman and Louis Comfort Tiffany; and interpretations of the Orient as emancipatory by Ella Pell, the only major woman Orientalist. The book next traces the popularization of Orientalism in the decorative arts (including a few treasures from Olana, Church's Moorish-style home on the Hudson), on Broadway, and in Hollywood, as well as through advertising that linked consumer products with visual suggestions of exotic sexuality and through cultural objects, such as the Shriners' fez.The generous color plates show both an innocent romanticization of the Orient and a darker, heavily eroticized version of Oriental otherness. An excellent chronology and bibliography, in addition to expert essays by both Americanists and Islamicists, give context to absorbing images. Though a perfect companion for visitors to the exhibition, Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures is also for anyone seeking an uncommon take on the development of American self-understanding. Exhibition Schedule: ? The Sterling and Francine Clark Art InstituteWilliamstown, MassachusettsJune 11-September 4, 2000 The Walters Art GalleryBaltimore, MarylandOctober 1-December 10, 2000 The Mint Museum of ArtCharlotte, North CarolinaFebruary 3-April 22, 2001

A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China


Benjamin A. Elman - 2000
    Elman uses over a thousand newly available examination records from the Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing dynasties, 1315-1904, to explore the social, political, and cultural dimensions of the civil examination system, one of the most important institutions in Chinese history. For over five hundred years, the most important positions within the dynastic government were usually filled through these difficult examinations, and every other year some one to two million people from all levels of society attempted them.Covering the late imperial system from its inception to its demise, Elman revises our previous understanding of how the system actually worked, including its political and cultural machinery, the unforeseen consequences when it was unceremoniously scrapped by modernist reformers, and its long-term historical legacy. He argues that the Ming-Ch'ing civil examinations from 1370 to 1904 represented a substantial break with T'ang-Sung dynasty literary examinations from 650 to 1250. Late imperial examinations also made "Tao Learning," Neo-Confucian learning, the dynastic orthodoxy in official life and in literati culture. The intersections between elite social life, popular culture, and religion that are also considered reveal the full scope of the examination process throughout the late empire.

Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent


Jad Adams - 2000
    He created much of his best work while suffering from tuberculosis. The most tragic of his generation, his life is a story of doomed love and adversity. Adams explores how the poet's strange delights and sexual excesses were worked into his lyrical verse.

Ashes And Blood: The British Army In South Africa, 1795 1914


Alan J. Guy - 2000
    

Beatrix Potter: at home in the Lake District


Susan Denyer - 2000
    She also worked to protect some of the finest examples of the Lake District's landscapes and created romantic interiors and a beautiful garden at Hill Top, the farmhouse she bought at Near Sawrey in 1905. Her picturesque house and the breathtaking scenery inspired many of Beatrix's stories and drawings, and this book looks at the intimate connection between the Lake District and her work. With numerous extracts from her letters and diaries, this illustrated book celebrates Potter's achievements in the Lake District and her major gifts to the National Trust.

The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism


Karl P. Ameriks - 2000
    The essays in the volume trace and explore the unifying themes of German Idealism, and discuss their relationship to Romanticism, the Enlightenment, and the culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. The result is an illuminating overview of a rich and complex philosophical movement that will appeal to a wide range of readers in philosophy, German studies, theology, literature, and the history of ideas.

Beyond the Sunset


Margaret Thornton - 2000
    During the festivities she meets Joss, a distinguished gentleman who is clearly smitten by her. Her future seems full of promise but her dreams are dashed when tragedy strikes her family and she has to take responsibility for her siblings, leaving her ambitions, and Joss, behind. Life is a struggle but in time she marries Hector Stubbins, believing she has found love and security, but Hector is not the man he first appears to be.

Sherlock Holmes: Three Tales of Betrayal


Arthur Conan Doyle - 2000
    Silver Blaze: A trusted horse trainer is murdered. Holmes and Watson are on the case, but a strange knife and a missing horse confuse the investigation. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches: Copper beeches in the front of a mysterious house expose betrayal.

Undomesticated Ground


Stacy Alaimo - 2000
    Feminists, troubled by the way in which such representations show women controlled by powerful natural forces and confined to domestic space, have sought to distance themselves from nature. In Undomesticated Ground, Stacy Alaimo issues a bold call to reclaim nature as feminist space. Her analysis of a remarkable range of feminist writings--as well as of popular journalism, visual arts, television, and film--powerfully demonstrates that nature has been and continues to be an essential concept for feminist theory and practice.Alaimo urges feminist theorists to rethink the concept of nature by probing the vastly different meanings that it carries. She discusses its significance for Americans engaged in social and political struggles from, for example, the Indian Wars of the early nineteenth century, to the birth control movement in the 1920s, to contemporary battles against racism and heterosexism. Reading works by Catherine Sedgwick, Mary Austin, Emma Goldman, Nella Larson, Donna Haraway, Toni Morrison, and others, Alaimo finds that some of these writers strategically invoke nature for feminist purposes while others cast nature as a postmodern agent of resistance in the service of both environmentalism and the women's movement.By examining the importance of nature within literary and political texts, this book greatly expands the parameters of the nature writing genre and establishes nature as a crucial site for the cultural work of feminism.

Augusta Webster: Portraits and Other Poems


Augusta Webster - 2000
    "Anyone interested in Victorian poetry, women's writing, or nineteenth-century feminism will appreciate this extremely interesting volume by an important Victorian writer." -- Dorothy Mermin, Cornell University

Nez Perce Summer, 1877: The US Army and the Nee-Me-Poo Crisis


Jerome A. Greene - 2000
    Written by a noted frontier military historian and reviewed by members of the Nez Perce tribe, this is the most definitive treatment of the Nez Perce War to date.

Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825–1861


Catherine Hoover Voorsanger - 2000
    How can it organize, teach and offer therapy in ways that are relevant to the diverse complex and social and cultural groups of people who seek psychological help? How should it adapt to demands for accountability and evidence? How can it cope in a climate of competition and market share? Should it cleave to medicine or abandon it? Define itself as a science or an art or an ethical practice?

The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in Nineteenth-Century Britain


Andrew Wawn - 2000
    It explores the ways in which the terms 'Viking' and 'Viking Age', both unknown in 1800, were invented, explored and popularised during thenineteenth century. The material examined - published and unpublished - includes novels, poems, plays, lectures, reviews, secondary school textbooks, saga-stead travelogues, private correspondence, art and music, as well as dictionaries, grammars and scholarly editions of eddas and sagas. In the cast of characters Sir Walter Scott, William Morris, Edward Elgar and Rudyard Kipling appear alongside long-forgotten amateur enthusiasts from Lerwick to the Isleof Wight. We follow the pursuit of Viking-related archaeology, dialectology, folklore, philology, runology and mythology. We see the old north used to legitimise many concepts and causes - from buccaneering mercantilism and imperial expansion to jury trial and women's rights. In drawing this wide range of materials together, Andrew Wawn presents a comprehensive and colourful account of the construction and translation of the Viking Age in Queen Victoria'sBritain.ANDREW WAWN is Professor of Anglo-Icelandic Studies at the University of Leeds.

Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood


Martin A. Berger - 2000
    Man Made examines Eakins's art and life, illustrating how the artist used his canvases to cope with the complex requirements of Victorian gender. Martin Berger reads a series of Eakins's paintings, ranging from early to late works, giving a nuanced and elegant examination of Eakins's portrayal of white, middle-class manhood. This provocative cultural art history treats these paintings in terms of what they reveal about Eakins's own identity as well as the nation's changing ideals of manhood during the final years of the nineteenth century.

The Portable Louisa May Alcott


Louisa May Alcott - 2000
    Now, at the end of the twentieth century, Alcott's vast body of work is being celebrated alongside the greatest American writers, and this collection shows why. The Portable Louisa May Alcott samples the entire spectrum of Alcott's work: her novels, novellas, children's stories, sensationalist fiction, gothic tales, essays, letters, and journals. Presenting her more daring works, such as Moods and Behind a Mask (both reprinted in their entirety), alongside the familiar heroines of Little Women, this singular collection offers readers a rich and wide-ranging portrait of this talented, prolific, and influential writer.

Arthur Conan Doyle


Janet B. Pascal - 2000
    He expected to be remembered for his historical fiction, especially The White Company. He also wrote science fiction novels, short stories, and horror tales. He was knighted for a pamphlet he wrote justifying England's actions during the Boer War, in which he served as a physician in a field hospital. After one of his sons was killed during World War I, he turned to spiritualism for comfort. He became a prominent spiritualist, lecturing and writing frequently on the subject. This book--the first biography of Arthur Conan Doyle written for young adults--provides a lively account of the writer's fascinating life. Pascal considers the overlaps between the fictional Holmes and Watson and their creator, and draws a memorable picture of late Victorian society. Sidebars containing excerpts from Doyle's writings, and numerous photographs and illustrations invigorate the captivating narrative.Oxford Portraits is a new series of biographies for young adults. Written by prominent writers and historians, each of these titles is designed to supplement the core texts of the middle and high school curriculum with intriguing, thoroughly informative and insightful accounts of the lives and work of the notable men and women who helped shape history. Each book is illustrated with numerous graphics, photographs, and documents. A unique feature is the inclusion of sidebars containing primary source material, mostly excerpts from the subject's writings. A chronology, further reading list, and index rounds out every volume.

France Since 1870: Culture, Politics and Society


Charles Sowerwine - 2000
    The book ends with President Mitterand's retirement, an epochal event that marked the severing of France's last link with the Vichy government and the Fourth Republic.

Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form


Susan McClary - 2000
    Exploring the ways that shared musical practices transmit social knowledge, Conventional Wisdom offers an account of our own cultural moment in terms of two dominant traditions: tonality and blues.McClary looks at musical history from new and unexpected angles and moves easily across a broad range of repertoires--the blues, eighteenth-century tonal music, late Beethoven, and rap. As one of the most influential trailblazers in contemporary musical understanding, McClary once again moves beyond the borders of the "purely musical" into the larger world of history and society, and beyond the idea of a socially stratified core canon toward a musical pluralism. Those who know McClary only as a feminist writer will discover her many other sides, but not at the expense of gender issues, which are smoothly integrated into the general argument. In considering the need for a different way of telling the story of Western music, Conventional Wisdom bravely tackles big issues concerning classical, popular, and postmodern repertoires and their relations to the broader musical worlds that create and enjoy them.

The Idea of Louis Sullivan


John Szarkowski - 2000
    In 1956, before Szarkowski gained fame as the Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, he was the author/photographer of a book on Sullivan. Published by the University of Minnesota Press. The Idea of Louis Sullivan has long been out-of-print.Bulfinch Press has decided to bring this classic book back in print. The photographs have been declared by no less an authority than Frank Lloyd Wright, a protege of Sullivan's, as the best ever taken of Sullivan's work. This edition, with a new, elegant design and duotone reproductions using today's print technology, promises to be a beautiful photography book and a much welcomed architectural book about this pivotal Chicago architect.The text is composed of excerpts from contemporary sources, mostly from Louis Sullivan's own distinguished and charming commentaries on architecture and modern society, and a foreword by Szarkowski, as well as a preface to the new edition. Terence Riley will contribute an introduction on Sullivan's significance to modern architecture from today's perspective.

Mardi Gras Treasures: Invitations of the Golden Age


Henri Schindler - 2000
    Presented in this collection are nearly two hundred dazzling examples of that artistry.

Germany from Reich to Republic, 1871-1918


Matthew S. Seligmann - 2000
    Focusing on domestic politics as well as diplomacy, personalities, and decision-making, attention is given to the latest historical research, the documentary evidence on which it is based, and the debates and controversies that are thereby evoked.

The Russian Master and Other Stories


Anton Chekhov - 2000
    Anne, and the title story.

Weldon's Practical Needlework, Volume 2


PieceWork Magazine - 2000
    In this volume you'll find an abundance of simple, practical knitting patterns, with an emphasis on socks, mittens, and other small accessories, as well as several lovely counterpane squares. Patterns are exact replicas of the premier needlework magazine from turn-of-the-century England. Each volume is filled with hundreds of vintage projects, illustrations, information on little-known techniques, fashion as it was in the late 1800s and brief histories of needlework.

Oxford Reader's Companion to Conrad


Owen Knowles - 2000
    His own life was as astonishing as any of his novels: born in the Ukraine of Polish parents, after a childhood in exile and a 20-year career as a merchant seaman, he began in middle age to write in English, the language of his newly adopted country. The Oxford Reader's Companion to Conrad represents a unique and long-overdue achievement in Conrad scholarship: the first comprehensive and authoritative reference to distil in a lively, readable way a vast range of information on Joseph Conrad's life, works, reputation, and the historical and cultural contexts in which he lived. Much of the material in the Companion is entirely new, compiled from scattered Conrad resources, many of which have never been published before. Produced by two of the world's leading Conradians, with the help of specialist contributors, here are the latest findings of modern scholarship captured in an unparalleled resource for all Conrad enthusiasts.

Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century


Ida Blom - 2000
    The focus on the twentieth century and in particular the post-colonial and post-socialist era, however, has neglected the crucial developmental phase of modern nationalism, when basic patterns were created that were to exert long-term influence on the political culture of nations in and outside Europe. This book examines how gender and nation legitimize and limit the access of individuals and groups to national movements and the resources of nation-state. From problems of inclusion, exclusion and difference, national wars and military systems to national symbols, rituals and myths, contributors present a diverse array of critical perspectives, methodological approaches, and case-studies that are intellectually provocative and will help to guide future research as well as orient it toward international comparison.This book raises new questions about nation and gender and provides an assessment of the state of research in different countries for all those interested in cultural and social history, politics, anthropology and gender studies.

Six Nineteenth Century French Poets: With Parallel French Text


A.M. Blackmore - 2000
    These poems explore the complexities of human emotion and ponder the great questions of religion and art." "This anthology includes generous selections from the six nineteenth-century French poets most often read in the English-speaking word today. Modern translations are printed opposite the original French verse, and the edition contains over a thousand lines of poetry never previously translated into English.

The Wicked Wit of Oscar Wilde Centenary Edition


Maria Leach - 2000
    

Victorian Days: Discover the Past with Fun Projects, Games, Activities, and Recipes


David C. King - 2000
    Join the Kadinskys, a family of Polish immigrants working hard to start a new life, and the Hobarts, a well-to-do American family living in a large house near Central Park. Steam into New York Harbor with eleven-year-old Mary Kadinsky and share her thrilling first sight of the Statue of Liberty. Start a new school year with twelve-year-old William Hobart and discover a game called basketball. Be a part of their daily lives during this time of remarkable growth and change with fun and easy projects, recipes, activities, and games. Make cinnamon bread sticks and play Polish checkers. Decorate Easter eggs and prepare for a Victorian Christmas. Create Polish paper cutouts and cook up your own rock candy. Share the Victorians' love of nature and collecting, and learn to make plaster of paris casts of natural objects like autumn leaves--or animal footprints. Experiment with snowflake impressions, learn to measure the distance of lightning, and unlock the secrets of electricity.. From Mary's inviting kitchen and William's basement workshop to the bustling beach resort at Coney Island and ice-skating in Central Park, Victorian Days will take you back to a fascinating period in American history. Watch for World War II Days, the next exciting book in the American Kids in History?(TM) series! Also available: Civil War Days, Pioneer Days, Colonial Days, and Wild West Days for Children Ages 8 to 12

The Victorians and the Visual Imagination


Kate Flint - 2000
    It draws on writers as diverse as George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Rudyard Kipling as well as pre-Raphaelite and realist painters including Millais, Burne-Jones, William Powell Frith and Whistler, and a host of Victorian scientists, cultural commentators and art critics. Topics discussed include blindness, memory, hallucination, dust, and the importance of the horizon--a dazzling array of subjects linked together by the operations of the eye and brain. This richly illustrated book will appeal to anyone studying Victorian culture.

Stryker's Bride


Joyce Adams - 2000
    Masquerading as Jeanette, Jacey intends to stall the wedding...never anticipating her reaction to her "intended", rugged Texas lawman.

The Webster-Hayne Debate on the Nature of the Union: Selected Documents


Herman Belz - 2000
    To Hayne, the Union was the voluntary compact among sovereign states. The Webster-Hayne Debate consists of speeches delivered in the United States Senate in January of 1830.Herman Belz is Professor of History at the University of Maryland.Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.

The Memoir of James Jackson, the Attentive and Obedient Scholar, Who Died in Boston, October 31, 1833, Aged Six Years and Eleven Months: ,


Susan Paul - 2000
    So begins the life of James Jackson, as set down by his African American teacher, Susan Paul, in 1835, as an example to other children and adults who might learn from the boy's goodness. This document - the first African American biography and a work predates Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the life of a slave girl by almost 30 years - is a lost treasure from the annals of African American history.

1812: Napoleon's Invasion of Russia


Paul Britten Austin - 2000
    Drawing on hundreds of eyewitness accounts by French and allied soldiers of Napoleon's army, this brilliant study recreates a landmark military campaign in all its death and glory.

Kit Carson: Mountain Man


Tracey Boraas - 2000
    Traces the life of the well-known figure from the Old West, Kit Carson, from his childhood in Kentucky and Missouri, through his years as a trapper, explorer and soldier, to his death in Colorado in 1868.

Women's Gothic: From Clara Reeve To Mary Shelley


E.J. Clery - 2000
    Each volume includes biographical material, an examination of recent criticism, a bibliography and a reappraisal of a major work by the writer.

Consuming Anxieties: Consumer Protest, Gender British Slavery, 1713-1833


Charlotte Sussman - 2000
    Consuming Anxieties asks why this mode of political protest has proved so influential over the past two hundred years, and why it was particularly useful in anticolonial struggles. It answers these questions through new readings of literary works by Jonathan Swift, Tobias Smollett, and others, as well as through investigations of eighteenth-century political and economic discourses connected with consumer culture and colonialism.The book examines the history of consumer protests against colonialism from 1713 to 1833—from the Treaty of Utrecht to the abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean. Recognizing the impact of consumerism on perceptions of the colonial periphery during this period reveals the crucial role of commodity fetishism in colonialist ideology. At the same time, acknowledging the effects of colonial and mercantile expansion on domestic consumer practices explains some of the anxiety surrounding colonial commodities. Women played a crucial role in these dynamics, and this book's analysis of gender illuminates the ways in which colonialism permeated not only the public sphere of politics and trade, but also the seemingly private realms of domesticity and sentiment.The book is in two parts. The first three chapters deal with the history of consumer protests against colonialism and imperialism, notably the uses of the tactic in Ireland early in the eighteenth century and the mid-century anxiety over colonial products in English domestic life. The last three chapters concentrate on the role of commodity culture and consumer protest in the British debates over Caribbean slavery. Although its roots in earlier anticolonial protests are not always recognized, antislavery activists inherited and expertly manipulated a set of tactics developed in previous contests.

The Spectacle of Intimacy: A Public Life for the Victorian Family


Karen Chase - 2000
    But the Victorians attached unprecedented importance to domesticity, romanticizing the family in every medium from novels to government reports, to the point where actual families felt anxious and the public developed a fierce appetite for scandal. Here Karen Chase and Michael Levenson explore how intimacy became a spectacle and how this paradox energized Victorian culture between 1835 and 1865. They tell a story of a society continually perfecting the forms of private pleasure and yet forever finding its secrets exposed to view. The friction between the two conditions sparks insightful discussions of authority and sentiment, empire and middle-class politics.The book recovers neglected episodes of this mid-century drama: the adultery trial of Caroline Norton and the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne; the Bedchamber Crisis of the young Queen Victoria; the Bloomer craze of the 1850s; and Robert Kerr's influential treatise, celebrating the ideal of the English Gentleman's House. The literary representation of household life--in Dickens, Tennyson, Ellis, and Oliphant, among others--is placed in relation to such public spectacles as the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill of 1848, the controversy over divorce in the years 1854-1857, and the triumphant return of Florence Nightingale from the Crimea. These colorful incidents create a telling new portrait of Victorian family life, one that demands a fundamental rethinking of the relation between public and private spheres.

Star-Spangled Eden: An Exploration of the American Character in the 19th Century


James C. Simmons - 2000
    Besides the nation that Charles Dickens hugely quarreled with or the one with which Oscar Wilde fell wittily in love, this lively volume examines the America that prompted Frances Trollope to acidly indict barbarous Cincinnati and that turned the celebrated actress Fanny Kemble into a passionate abolitionist. It explores the Colorado Territory with George Ruxton and travels by stagecoach with Richard Burton across the Great Plains. It follows the path of William Howard Russell, who covered the outbreak of the Civil War for the London Times, and chronicles the adventures of Frank Harris as a real-life Texas cowboy. In all, it brings new light to the dawn of modern America.

Nineteenth-Century American Art


Barbara Groseclose - 2000
    Works of art by familiar names such as Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer are discussed in detail within the larger arena of visual culture, as are key works by recently discovered artists such as Harriet Hosmer. The thematic approach focuses on portraiture, landscape painting, the American West, and commemorative art, then goes on to examine the ways in which painters responded to major social and economic changes resulting from the rapid transformation from an agriculturally-based former colony to an industrialized imperial power with an evolving democracy.

Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and the Civil War: Selected Writings and Speeches


Abraham Lincoln - 2000
    Classics like the Kansas-Nebraska speech, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, and the Gettysburg Address, along with less familiar writings — poignant letters to individual voters, notes to generals on military strategy, and stirring public speeches — show the development of Lincoln's thought on free labor, slavery, secession, the Civil War, and emancipation. Johnson provides historical context by weaving an engaging narrative around Lincoln’s own words, making this volume the most accessible collection of Lincoln’s writings available. Also included are 14 illustrations, relevant Civil War maps, a Lincoln chronology, reading questions, a bibliography, and an index.

The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration: Power on Parade, 1877-1995


Thomas M. Spencer - 2000
    Louis for more than a century. Founded in March 1878 by a group of prominent St. Louis businessmen, the organization was fashioned after the New Orleans Carnival society the Mystick Krewe of Comus. In The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration, Thomas Spencer explores the social and cultural functions of the organization's annual celebration—the Veiled Prophet parade and ball—and traces the shifts that occurred over the years in its cultural meaning and importance. Although scholars have researched the more pluralistic parades of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, very little has been done to examine the elite-dominated parades of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study shows how pluralistic parades ceased to exist in St. Louis and why the upper echelon felt it was so important to end them.Spencer shows that the celebration originated as the business elite's response to the St. Louis general strike of 1877. Symbolically gaining control of the streets, the elites presented St. Louis history and American history by tracing the triumphs of great men—men who happened to be the Veiled Prophet members' ancestors. The parade, therefore, was intended to awe the masses toward passivity with its symbolic show of power. The members believed that they were helping to boost St. Louis economically and culturally by enticing visitors from the surrounding communities. They also felt that the parades provided the spectators with advice on morals and social issues and distracted them from less desirable behavior like drinking and carousing.From 1900 to 1965 the celebration continued to include educational and historical elements; thereafter, it began to resemble the commercialized leisure that was increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. The biggest change occurred in the period from 1965 to 1980, when the protests of civil rights groups led many St. Louisans to view the parade and ball as wasteful conspicuous consumption that was often subsidized with taxpayers' money. With membership dropping and the news media giving the organization little notice, it soon began to wither. In response, the leaders of the Veiled Prophet organization decided to have a "VP Fair" over the Fourth of July weekend. The 1990s brought even more changes, and the members began to view the celebration as a way to unite the St. Louis community, with all of its diversity, rather than as a chance to boost the city or teach cultural values. The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration is a valuable addition not only to the cultural history of Missouri and St. Louis but also to recent scholarship on urban culture, city politics, and the history of public celebrations in America.

A Queer Chivalry: The Homoerotic Asceticism of Gerard Manley Hopkins


Julia F. Saville - 2000
    As a result, his commentators have felt obliged to take a stand approving or disapproving of this rigorous self-discipline: Many idealize his allegiance to the Society of Jesus as motivated by his determination to conquer his attraction to other men, and thus as the source of the spiritual strength from which his eucharistic and Christological verse derived. Others decry his monasticism as the regrettably oppressive regimen from which he was able to escape only occasionally through his sensuous, sometimes overtly homoerotic verse.Julia F. Saville uses Lacanian theories of sublimation and courtly love to reconfigure this long-standing rift in the field of Hopkins criticism. Her book displaces hagiographic interpretations of the poet's life, arguing that Hopkins's poetics of homoerotic asceticism shaped his work in such a way that his career should be viewed not as a steady linear progression but as an ongoing process of negotiating his desire. It also constitutes a map tracing the alternating practices of self-discipline and self-indulgence, self-expression and self-silencing performed by Hopkins's verse.Saville presents a new reading of asceticism that does not advocate or condemn its practice. What is needed, she argues, is a reading that explains first the dialectical capacity of asceticism both to constrain and to liberate, to cause discomfort and to give satisfaction, and second, the ethical value of recognizing and encouraging this dialectical operation.A Queer Chivalry highlights the strange blending of sensual delight and strict self-denial in Hopkins's courtly verse, initiating a new trend in criticism that celebrates the poet's queer status as the Victorian troubadour-priest.