Charlotte Dacre’s debut novel Confessions of the Nun of St Omer (1805) was a bestseller in its day, launching the career of a woman who would go on to become one of the nineteenth century’s most notorious female novelists. The work tells the story of the wilful Cazire, who recounts her passionate and destructive youthful adventures from the convent where she now lives in seclusion. Although Dacre’s fame, then and now, rests largely on her sensationalist plots and portrayal of sexually self-possessed female villains, Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer shows a different side to her writing, one that is engaged in the political debate surrounding the French Revolution and eager to uphold the conservative moral line. Indeed, in many ways the novel strives to exemplify the moral and social orthodoxies of its time – dealing with themes of education, passion, seduction and the dangers of the radical ‘new philosophy’. Yet even at this early stage of her career the author’s frank exploration of the power of female desire reveals a willingness to experiment with themes left untouched by more conventional Romantic era novelists, themes that would dominate her writing for years to come. This edition of Charlotte Dacre’s book is based on the Chawton House Library copy of the text from 1805 and contains textual notes. The book will be of interest to those researching the Gothic, women’s writing and the development of the nineteenth-century novel.

Charlotte Dacre's The Confessions of the Nun of St Omer (1805) was a bestseller with two subsequent editions by 1807. It tells the story of the willful Cazire, a young woman who is most susceptible to romantic temptations. In this volume, the conflicted Cazire shrinks from her relationship with Fribourg, yet she is snared by the crafty Lindorf. Lindorf's betrayal leaves Cazire a broken, abandoned woman.

The French Revolution sparked an ideological debate which also brought Britain to the brink of revolution in the 1790s. Just as radicals wrote 'Jacobin' fiction, so the fear of rebellion prompted conservatives to respond with novels of their own; indeed, these soon outnumbered the Jacobin novels. This was the first survey of the full range of conservative novels produced in Britain during the 1790s and early 1800s. M. O. Grenby examines the strategies used by conservatives in their fiction, thus shedding new light on how the anti-Jacobin campaign was understood and organised in Britain. Chapters cover the representation of revolution and rebellion, the attack on the 'new philosophy' of radicals such as Godwin and Wollstonecraft, and the way in which hierarchy is defended in these novels. Grenby's book offers an insight into the society which produced and consumed anti-Jacobin novels, and presents a case for reexamining these neglected texts.

New editions and facsimiles of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works are changing the landscape of Shelley studies by making complete compositions and fragments that have received only limited critical attention readily available to scholars. Building on the work begun in Weinberg and Webb's 2009 volume, The Unfamiliar Shelley, The Neglected Shelley sheds light on the breadth and depth of Shelley's oeuvre, including the poet's earliest work, written when he was not yet twenty and was experimenting with gothic romances, and other striking forms of literary expression, such as two collections of provocative verse. There are discussions of Shelley's collaboration with Mary Shelley in the composition of Frankenstein, and his skill as a translator of Greek poetry and drama, reflecting his urgent concern with Greek culture. His contributions to prose are the focus of essays on his letters, the subversive notes to Queen Mab, and his complex engagement with Jewish culture. Shelley's considerable corpus of fragments is well-represented in contributions on the later narrative fiction, 'Athanase'/'Prince Athanase', and the significant group of unfinished poems, including 'Mazenghi', 'Fiordispina', 'Ginevra' and 'The Boat on the Serchio', that treat Italian topics. Finally, there are explorations of subtle though neglected or underestimated works such as Rosalind and Helen, The Sensitive-Plant, and the verse-drama Hellas. The Neglected Shelley shows that even the poet's apparently slighter works are important in their own right and are richly instructive as expressions of Shelley's developing art of composition and the diverse interests he pursued throughout his career.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection includes the full-text of more than 9,500 English, French and German titles. The collection is sourced from the remarkable library of Victor Amadeus, whose Castle Corvey collection was one of the most spectacular discoveries of the late 1970s. The Corvey Collection comprises one of the most important collections of Romantic era writing in existence anywhere -- including fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry, and more -- with a focus on especially difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers. The Corvey library was built during the last half of the 19th century by Victor and his wife Elise, both bibliophiles with varied interests. The collection thus contains everything from novels and short stories to belles lettres and more populist works, and includes many exceedingly rare works not available in any other collection from the period. These invaluable, sometimes previously unknown works are of particular interest to scholars and researchers. European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection includes: * Novels and Gothic Novels * Short Stories * Belles-Lettres * Short Prose Forms * Dramatic Works * Poetry * Anthologies * And more Selected with the guidance of an international team of expert advisors, these primary sources are invaluable for a wide range of academic disciplines and areas of study, providing never before possible research opportunities for one of the most studied historical periods. Additional Metadata Primary Id: B0623902 PSM Id: NCCOF0063-C00000-B0623902 DVI Collection Id: NCCOC0062 Bibliographic Id: NCCO001557 Reel: 4854 MCODE: 4UVC Original Publisher: Printed by D. N. Shury, for J. F. Hughes Original Publication Year: 1805 Subjects English fiction -- 19th century.

Countess Appollonia Zulmer – beautiful, rich, and popular – can have any man she wants, at least until she meets Count Wiemar. Interested only in submissive, uneducated and unworldly women, Wiemar rejects Appollonia in favour of Julia, a simple woman whose primary joy in life is to obey her husband’s will. Despondent and then furious, Appollonia vows revenge, becoming Julia’s intimate confidante, opening her eyes to the limitations of patriarchy, and convincing her that her growing feelings for Count Darlowitz, Wiemar’s best friend, are no crime. An epistolary novel about the destructive power of emotion, The Passions offers new insights into early feminism, romantic understandings of emotion and the sublime, and early nineteenth-century religious debates. It is an engrossing, powerful work of nineteenth-century literature, featuring one of the most memorable female villains of all time. Available to modern audiences for the first time, The Passions will engross literary scholars and casual readers alike.

This book argues that the source of Gothic terror is anxiety about the boundaries of the self: a double fear of separateness and unity that has had a special significance for women writers and readers. Exploring the psychological, religious, and epistemological context of this anxiety, DeLamotte argues that the Gothic vision focuses simultaneously on the private demons of the psyche and the social realities that helped to shape them. Her analysis includes works of English and American authors, among them Henry James, Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, and a number of often neglected popular women Gothicists.

Female writers of the Gothic were hell-raisers in more than one sense: not only did they specialize in evoking scenes of horror, cruelty, and supernaturalism, but in doing so they exploded the literary conventions of the day, and laid claim to realms of the imagination hitherto reserved for men. They were rewarded with popular success, large profits, and even critical adulation. E.J. Clery's acclaimed study tells the strange but true story of women's gothic. She identifies contemporary fascination with the operation of the passions and the example of the great tragic actress Sarah Siddons as enabling factors, and then examines in depth the careers of two pioneers of the genre, Clara Reeve and Sophie Lee, its reigning queen, Ann Radcliffe, and the daring experimentalists Joanna Baillie and Charlotte Dacre. The account culminates with Mary Shelley, whose Frankenstein (1818) has attained mythical status. Students and scholars as well as general readers will find Women's Gothic a stimulating introductio