The Works of Charlotte Smith, Part III

ISBN-13: 9781851967957 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 1712 str.

Opis

In recent years, the central position held by Charlotte Turner Smith during the formative years of the British Romantic period has become increasingly clear. Her hitherto neglected poetry has in recent years been restored to its rightful place in the canon of English literature - Wordsworth rightly foresaw her status as a poet 'to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be either acknowledged or remembered'. Less attention, however, has been paid to Smith's eleven novels, the majority of which have never been reprinted. This edition reveals the extent to which Smith's work in this form constitutes as significant an achievement as her poetry. Smith's distinctive social consciousness, (steadfastly liberal and broadly inclusive in an increasingly repressive climate) stakes claims far in advance of her time, focusing particularly on the plight of women and of those dispossessed by warfare. The same social consciousness and propensity for fictional realism inform her five children's books, none of which has been reprinted before this edition. "The Works of Charlotte Smith" restores an essential voice in British Romanticism to the prominence she held in her own time, revealing a writer who wrote well in many genres, and, in whatever form she undertook, was innovative with the forms she inherited and strongly influential on those who followed her.

Spis treści

Part III Volume 11 Letters of a Solitary Wanderer (1800, 1802) An experimental collection of five novellas unified by a nameless Wanderer, this work places each novella in a different geographical setting - Yorkshire, Jamaica, sixteenth-century France, eighteenth-century Germany, and modern Ireland - and is centered around themes of religious strife and pervasive threats to domestic peace. Volume 12 Rural Walks (1795); Rambles Farther (1796); Minor Morals (1798) Smith's contributions to children's conduct literature are notable for their liberal political sentiments, their realistic representation of the rural countryside and their emphasis on precise natural description, and the use of poetry for inculcating moral values. A Narrative of the Loss of the Catherine (1796) This is a brief journalistic piece, written to raise money for the victims of a shipwreck. Volume 13 Who is She? (1798); Conversations Introducing Poetry, chiefly on subjects of natural history (1804); The Natural History of Birds (1807) What is She?, a sprightly comedy, is Smith's only effort for the stage. The Conversations and History of Birds are continuations of her children's writings and are remarkably vibrant works from the now invalid Smith. The Conversations represents the first attempt to teach children how to read poetry; poetry also intrudes, mainly through imaginative fables, on avian culture. In both books Smith's commitment to natural particularity carries moral and political overtones. Volume 14 Poems Including both volumes of Elegiac Sonnets (1784, 1797), The Emigrants (1792), and Beachy Head, and Other Poems (1807), this volume will collect all of Smith's verse, authoritatively edited, into a single volume.