Charlotte Smith''s life was the stuff of romantic anguish; upon marriage she felt exiled in "personal slavery", and began publishing poems to earn money while in debtor''s prison with her extravagant husband. They subsequently resided in France and lived on subscriptions to her poems and translation work, but she eventually left her husband, "fearing my life was not safe", and began publishing novels annually in order to provide for her children. Smith was the first English poet whom, in retrospect, we could call Romantic, and was particularly influential on Wordsworth''s style and ideas. Her poetry, beginning with the first edition of Elegaic Sonnets in 1784, was well received by her contemporaries; her final masterpiece, Beachy Head, published posthumously in 1807, powerfully illustrates the impulse to resolve the self into nature. Today, Smith is known primarily as a novelist (her previously un-reprinted novel, The Banished Man, will appear in the series), but this volume will be the first complete collection of her poems. It promises to revolutionize our ideas about the development of English Romanticism. This unprecedented new series reintroduces women''s writings of cultural and literary interest, from the Medieval period through the early nineteenth century, often for the first time since their original publication. Derived from the Brown University Women Writers Project, the series unearths a wide range of neglected gems, dispelling the myth that women wrote little of real value before the Victorian period. Each volume includes an introduction putting the work in its historical and literary context and helpful explanatory notes.
Industry Reviews
"Excellent notes--long-overdue work--beautifully designed."--Nicholas Jones, Oberlin College
Praise for the series: "Publishing these previously unknown or ignored volumes by women will revolutionize the canon of English and American literature taught in graduate and undergraduate courses. The list of texts is impressive. It includes some of the most important scholarship now under way in the field of Renaissance literature."--Margaret Hannay, Siena College
"Making these writers available in an easily accessible form contributes significantly not only to feminist scholarship, which has been seeking to recover the works of such writers for two decades, but also to teaching and scholarship more generally within the humanities, from the freshman level to the most specialized postgraduate level."--Marlon Ross, University of Michigan
"The texts chosen form an extremely interesting and quite varied group, and the prospect of having them in book form is exciting. Scholars and students will be much richer for it."--Carolyn Dinshaw, University of California, Berkeley
"Excellent notes--long-overdue work--beautifully designed."--Nicholas Jones, Oberlin College
Praise for the series: "Publishing these previously unknown or ignored volumes by women will revolutionize the canon of English and American literature taught in graduate and undergraduate courses. The list of texts is impressive. It includes some of the most important scholarship now under way in the field of Renaissance literature."--Margaret Hannay, Siena College
"Making these writers available in an easily accessible form contributes significantly not only to feminist scholarship, which has been seeking to recover the works of such writers for two decades, but also to teaching and scholarship more generally within the humanities, from the freshman level to the most specialized postgraduate level."--Marlon Ross, University of Michigan
"The texts chosen form an extremely interesting and quite varied group, and the prospect of having them in book form is exciting. Scholars and students will be much richer for it."--Carolyn Dinshaw, University of California, Berkeley
