A NPR CONCIERGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Jane fans rejoice! . . . Exceptional storytelling and a true delight." —Helen Simonson, author of the New York Times bestselling novels Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and The Summer Before the War Mary, the bookish ugly duckling of Pride and Prejudice’s five Bennet sisters, emerges from the shadows and transforms into a desired woman with choices of her own. What if Mary Bennet’s life took a different path from that laid out for her in Pride and Prejudice? What if the frustrated intellectual of the Bennet family, the marginalized middle daughter, the plain girl who takes refuge in her books, eventually found the fulfillment enjoyed by her prettier, more confident sisters? This is the plot of Janice Hadlow's The Other Bennet Sister, a debut novel with exactly the affection and authority to satisfy Jane Austen fans. Ultimately, Mary’s journey is like that taken by every Austen heroine. She learns that she can only expect joy when she has accepted who she really is. She must throw off the false expectations and wrong ideas that have combined to obscure her true nature and prevented her from what makes her happy. Only when she undergoes this evolution does she have a chance at finding fulfillment; only then does she have the clarity to recognize her partner when he presents himself—and only at that moment is she genuinely worthy of love. Mary’s destiny diverges from that of her sisters. It does not involve broad acres or landed gentry. But it does include a man; and, as in all Austen novels, Mary must decide whether he is the truly the one for her. In The Other Bennet Sister, Mary is a fully rounded character—complex, conflicted, and often uncertain; but also vulnerable, supremely sympathetic, and ultimately the protagonist of an uncommonly satisfying debut novel.

This adventure novel tells the tale of the Millenium Hall, the female Utopia. The people in the Hall live in a model of mid-century reform ideas. All the women have crafts with which to better themselves. Property is held in common, and education is the primary pastime. The narrator's long-lost cousin relates the series of adventures and how each of the residents arrived at this female Utopia. The adventures are remarkable for their reliance on a nearly superstitious form of divine grace, where God's will manifests itself with the direct punishment of the wicked and the miraculous protection of the innocent. In one tale, a woman about to be ravished by a man is saved, literally by the hand of God, as her attacker dies of a stroke. Millenium Hall was Sarah Scott's most significant novel. Interest in it has revived in the 21st century among feminist literary scholars.

The History of Sir George Ellison (1766) is an important novel, both utopian and dystopian. Sir George, a man of benevolence, follows the pattern of the female utopia set forth in Scott's first novel, A Description of Millenium Hall (1762). In this sequel, Scott addresses issues of slavery, marriage, education, law and social justice, class pretensions, and the position of women in society, consistently emphasizing the importance, for both genders and all classes and ages, of devoting one's life to meaningful work. Although she adopted a gradualist approach to reform, Scott's uncompromising revelation of the corruption of English society in her day is clear-sighted, arresting, and hard-hitting.

The uniformity of the eighteenth-century novel in today's paperbacks and critical editions no longer conveys the early novel's visual exuberance. Janine Barchas explains how during the genre's formation in the first half of the eighteenth century, the novel's material embodiment as printed book rivalled its narrative content in diversity and creativity. Innovations in layout, ornamentation, and even punctuation found in, for example, the novels of Richardson, an author who printed his own books, help shape a tradition of early visual ingenuity. From the beginning of the novel's emergence in Britain, prose writers including Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Henry and Sarah Fielding experimented with the novel's appearance. Lavishly illustrated with more than 100 graphic features found in eighteenth-century editions, this important study aims to recover the visual context in which the eighteenth-century novel was produced and read.