When Dillie began having difficulty accepting herself for who she was, her mother’s solution was to send her to spend the summer with her sister Juliette, Dillie’s favorite aunt. In Aunt J’s lovely beach environment, Dillie is able to see her true beauty and to learn some words of wisdom passed down from her grandfather.

"They say I'm a Yankee -- but if wanting peace is Yankee -- then I am one. I am tired of Disunion of husband & wife." In 1858, nineteen-year-old Priscilla "Mittie" Munnikhuysen began a new diary that saw her marry, leave her family in the genteel Protestant seaboard culture of Chesapeake Bay, and take up residence with her wealthy husband, Howard Bond, in the frontier plantation society of Catholicsouth Louisiana. By 1865, Priscilla Bond had witnessed trials and disillusionments enough to fill a two-volume journal: her father-in-law's brutality toward his slaves; her husband's alleged ambush of Union soldiers and subsequent flight from home; the retaliatory burning of the family's sugar plantation in Houma; and the losses, horrors, and daily depredations of war.Published here for the first time, with extensive notes and a critical introduction by Kimberly Harrison, Bond's intimate writings illuminate the Civil War's impact on women, families, and individual identities. Occasionally Bond records her experiences for the benefit of later readers, but more often she uses her diary to carve a space and time for self-reflection, self-instruction, and self-persuasion. Nineteenth-century women's lives were defined by their relation to others -- as wife, mother, daughter, and sister -- and keeping a diary allowed Bond to claim time for herself. It served as a rhetorical tool that helped motivate her to conform to contemporary standards of "true womanhood," adapt to a harsh new environment, and survive the collapse of a civilization. Harrison's interpretive commentary enables readers to appreciate the context within which Bond writes even as entries about everything from marital anguish to in-law difficulties to religious struggles to failing health bring Priscilla Bond uniquely and movingly to life. Her diary, deftly cross-referenced with numerous letters, adds a valuable and enriching layer of complexity to the larger story of the Civil War home front.

A detailed, analytical study of the life and times of this brilliant but bizarre personality (and the sexually erotic times he lived in), containing the essence of all his writings, based on research by Bloch in private archives of the French Government, and Bloch's discovery of de Sade's unpublished manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom in Marseilles. The work contains a precis of the 120 Days of Sodom, the first attempt systematically to catalog and describe abnormal sexual behavior -- 100 years before Krafft-Ebing. A serious academic study of France during de Sade's time, its sexual morality, de Sade's works, and the role of sadism in literature, etc., this biography precedes de Beauvoir's Faut-il Brule de Sade? and began the resuscitation and modern study of De Sade. The author Iwan Bloch, a German physician, won a distinguished name in the world of science in the fields, of medical history and anthropology.

An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary—a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century—London itself. “So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears . . . One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.”—The New York Times “A virtuoso achievement . . . It is an epic, a tour de force, a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale that will keep readers engrossed in days. . . . The Quincunx will not disappoint you. It is, quite simply, superb.”—Chicago Sun-Times “A bold and vivid tale that invites the reader to get lost in the intoxicating rhythms of another world. And the invitation is irresistible.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A remarkable book . . . In mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated . . . It is an immersing experience.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “To read the first pages is to be trapped for seven-hundred odd more: you cannot stop turning them.”—The New Yorker “Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us this way. . . . For sheer intricacy and ingenuity, for skill and clarity of storytelling, it is the kind of book readers wait for, a book to get lost in.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century. Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions. Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of "classics," adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her Subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works. In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies.

Karen Hesse has achieved many honors for her more than twenty books over the course of her award-winning career: the Newbery Medal, the Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award, the MacArthur Fellowship "Genius" Award, and the Christopher Medal. Her novels burn with intensity, and keenly felt, deeply researched, and are memorable for their imagination and intelligence. So it is with great pride and excitement that we present Karen Hesse's first novel in over five years: Brooklyn Bridge. It's the summer of 1903 in Brooklyn and all fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom wants is to experience the thrill, the grandeur, and the electricity of the new amusement park at Coney Island. But that doesn't seem likely. Ever since his parents—Russian immigrants—invented the stuffed Teddy Bear five months ago, Joseph's life has turned upside down. No longer do the Michtom's gather family and friends around the kitchen table to talk. No longer is Joseph at leisure to play stickball with the guys. Now, Joseph works. And complains. And falls in love. And argues with Mama and Papa. And falls out of love. And hopes. Joseph hopes he'll see Coney Island soon. He hopes that everything will turn right-side up again. He hopes his luck hasn't run out—because you never know. Through all the warmth, the sadness, the frustration, and the laughter of one big, colorful family, Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse builds a stunning story of the lucky, the unlucky, and those in between, and reminds us that our lives—all our lives—are fragile, precious, and connected. Brooklyn Bridge is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

This personal memoir “reminds us that there is no such thing as an ordinary moment, and certainly no such thing as an ordinary life.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love The Journal Keeper is an openhearted, unflinchingly honest memoir of six years in Phyllis Theroux’s life as she ages into her sixties. Reflecting deeply on both her practice as a writer and her personal experiences, she culls from the journals she carefully keeps to create a compelling narrative describing the void left by the passing of her remarkable mother—as well as the joyful surprise of a new love. A natural storyteller, she touches on subjects that occupy us all: loss, loneliness, growing old, financial worries, spiritual growth, and caring for an aging parent. “[Theroux] excels at closely observed and elegantly expressed portraits of domestic life . . . a lovely writer . . . The best thing about The Journal Keeper is the way it leaves us hopeful—and expectant—about what will happen next.” —TheChristian Science Monitor “Theroux seems to possess a certain calmness and wisdom . . . [The Journal Keeper] is full of small, lyrical insights.” —The Washington Post

Kay Boyle's second novel, Year Before Last, was published in 1932 by Harrison Smith in New York and by Faber and Faber in London, in each case a true edition from different settings of type. Matthew J. Bruccoli, the textual editor of the Cross­currents/Modern Fiction series, has used the Harrison Smith edition in preparing this volume which is unique in the annals of textual editing of a modern novel because the emendations in the copy-text have been approved by the author. Harry T. Moore has provided a Preface which considers this work in relation to Miss Boyle's development as a novelist. Mr. Bruccoli's Note on the Text provides information about both the 1932 editions and lists the emendations. Against the background of the French Riviera we watch the unfolding of the story of a young woman who has left her husband for another man, a poet of compelling personality. Their love affair is complicated by the insane jealousy of an older woman which leads them to acts of desperation. This novel of love and hate moves forward in swift incident and action to a dramatic end.