Broadview literary texts

"Set in the fictional landscape of Mariposa on the shores of Lake Wissanotti in Missinaba County, Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of A Little Town is an affectionate satire of small town life. This series of humorous connected sketches about graft, high finance, religion, love and romance is, on one level, an intimate, comic portrait of town life and local politics. On another level, the narrative is a powerful commentary on the workings of community values and on Canada's place within the British Empire."--BOOK JACKET.

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

A Home for the Highland Cattle is the wry comedy of a young English woman newly settled in an African city who, from the most enlightened of motives, departs from the generally accepted way of dealing with native servants. In the The Antheap, set in the gold fields of the former Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Tommy, the son of a white mine manager, has a tumultuous relationship with Dirk, the "half-caste" son of the mine owner.

The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) is the first original play by a woman to be published in England, and its author is the first English woman writer to be memorialized in a biography, which is included with this edition of the play. Mariam is a distinctive example of Renaissance drama that serves the desire of today's readers and scholars to know not merely how women were represented in the early modern period but also how they themselves perceived their own condition.

"Published together for the first time, Eliza Haywood's Anti-Pamela and Henry Fielding's An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews are the two most important responses to Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela. Anti-Pamela comments on Richardson's representations of work, virtue, and gender, while also questioning the generic expectations of the novel that Pamela establishes, and it provides a vivid portrayal of the material realities of life for a woman in eighteenth-century London. Fielding's Shamela punctures both the figure Richardson established for himself as an author and Pamela's preoccupation with virtue." "This Broadview edition also includes a rich selection of historical materials, including writings from the period on sexuality, women's work, Pamela and the print trade, and education and conduct."--BOOK JACKET.

"This collection of early works by Eliza Haywood includes the well-known novella Fantomina (1725) along with three other short, highly engaging Haywood works: The Tea-Table (1725), Reflections on the Various Effects of Love (1726), and Love-Letters on All Occasions (1730). In these writings, Haywood arouses the vicarious experience of erotic love while exploring the ethical and social issues evoked by sexual passion." "This Broadview edition includes an introduction that focuses on Haywood's life and career and on the status of prose fiction in the early eighteenth century. Also included are appendices of contextual materials from the period comprising writings by Haywood on female conduct, eighteenth-century pornography (from Venus in the Cloister), and a source text (Nahum Tate's A Present for the Ladies)."--BOOK JACKET.

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

"In 1810, while still at Eton, Percy Bysshe Shelley published Zastrozzi, the first of his two early Gothic prose romances. He published the second, St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, a year later. These sensationalist novels present some of Shelley's earliest thoughts on irresponsible self-indulgence and violent revenge, and offer remarkable insight into an imagination that is strikingly modern. This new Broadview Literary Texts edition also brings together the fragmentary remains of Shelley's other prose fiction, including his chapbook, Wolfstein, and contemporary reviews both by Shelley and about his work."--BOOK JACKET.

'The Rebel of the Family' (1880) is the first New Woman novel by Eliza Lynn Linton. Perdita Winstanley, the novel's protagonist, struggles to balance the competing demands on her snobbish, conservative mother and sisters, her radical friends in the women's rights movement, and an admirable but low-born chemist and his family. [This book] also includes what is perhaps the first literary portrait of the late-Victorian lesbian community in London, featuring Bell Blount and her 'little wife' Connie.

"Frances Burney's journals and letters, composed between 1768 and 1839, contain a unique account of the creative, social, and commercial ambitions and achievements of an eighteenth-century woman writer. Focusing on Burney's literary life, this selection from her journals and correspondence combines Burney's own accounts of the creation of her popular novels, her aspirations for her dramatic writings, and her reflections upon her letters and journals as literary productions in their own right."--BOOK JACKET.

" ... Haywood's first novel, Love in Excess [is] ... a well-crafted novel in which the claims of love and ambition are pursued through multiple storylines until the heroine engineers a melodramatic conclusion."--Back cover.

"This Broadview edition pairs two of Frances Burney's linked comedies. They both present the character of Lady Smatter, a "femme savante" whose lineage may be traced back to Moliere; they both centre on the misfortunes of the "elle" figure, the dispossessed heiress and wife who appears frequently in Burney's fiction; and they both criticize a culture of misogyny that breeds suspicion and resentment. The Witlings, lighter and more comic, derives from late seventeenth-century conventions; The Woman-Hater, more melodramatic, both expresses and warns against the excessive sensibility of romanticism. Together, these two plays constitute a miniature history of English drama from the Restoration to the French Revolution and beyond.". "This edition contains a valuable selection of appendices, including: Burney's "Epilogue to Gerilda"; letters and diary entries; contemporary writings on comedy; and Burney's cast-list for The Woman-Hater."--BOOK JACKET.

"Mary Robinson's A Letter to the Women of England (1799) is a radical response to the rampant anti-feminist sentiment of the late 1790s. In this work, Robinson urges her female contemporaries to throw off the "glittering shackles" of custom and to claim their rightful places as the social and intellectual equals of men." "Separately published in the same year, Robinson's novel The Natural Daughter follows the story of Martha Morley, who defies her husband's authority, adopts a found infant, is barred from her husband's estate and is driven to seek work as an actress and author. The novel implicitly links and critiques domestic tyrants in England and Jacobin tyrants in France." "This edition also includes: other writings by Mary Robinson (tributes, and an excerpt from The Progress of Liberty); writings by contemporaries on women, society, and revolution; and contemporary reviews of both works."--BOOK JACKET.

Browning's dramatic poem The Ring and the Book narrates the trial of a Roman for the death of his wife and her parents. He suspected his wife of having an affair with a cleric. The man appeals his sentence, though unsuccessfully. The poem is narrated by many different voices, each adding their version of events to the whole in a series of monologues.