A must-read for any devotee of Jane Austen, Janet Todd's 'naughty-Austen' reimagining of the epistolary novel Lady Susan will capture your literary imagination and get your heart racing. Austen's only anti-heroine, Lady Susan, is a beautiful, charming widow who has found herself, after the death of her husband, in a position of financial instability and saddled with an unmarried, clumsy and over-sensitive daughter. Faced with the unpalatable prospect of having to spend her widowed life in the countryside, Lady Susan embarks on a serious of manipulative games to ensure she can stay in town with her first passion - the card tables. Scandal inevitably ensues as she negotiates the politics of her late husband's family, the identity of a mysterious benefactor and a passionate affair with a married man. Accurate and true to Jane Austen's style, as befits Todd's position as a leading Austen scholar, this second coming of Lady Susan is as shocking, manipulative and hilarious as when Jane Austen first imagined her.
In this book, Janet Todd, one of the leading authorities on seventeenth- and eighteenth century women writers, discusses gender issues from the Restoration to Romanticism investigating women authors and the fascination with culturally privileged art and with heroic death.
Fascinating scholarship. Todd conveys Behn's vivacious character and the mores of the time' New York Times 'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn; for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds,' said Virginia Woolf. Yet that tomb, in Westminster Abbey, records one of the few uncontested facts about this Restoration playwright, poet of the erotic and bisexual, political propagandist, novelist and spy: the date of her death, 16 April 1689. For the rest secrecy and duplicity are almost the key to her life. She loved codes, making and breaking them; writing her life becomes a decoding of a passionate but playful woman. In this revised biography, Janet Todd draws on documents she has rediscovered in the Dutch archives, and on Behn's own writings, to tell a story of court, diplomatic and sexual intrigue, and of the rise from humble origins of the first woman to earn her living as a professional writer. Aphra Behn's first notable employment was as a royal spy in Holland; she had probably also spied in Surinam. It was not until she was in her thirties that she published the first of the nineteen plays and other works which established her fame (though not riches) among her 'good, sweet, honey-candied readers'. Many of her works were openly erotic, indeed as frank as anything by her friends Wycherley and Rochester. Some also offered an inside view of court and political intrigues, and Todd reveals the historical scandals and legal cases behind some of Behn's most famous 'fictions'. Janet Todd, novelist and internationally renowned scholar, was president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and a Professor at Rutgers, NJ. An expert on women's writing and feminism, she has written about many writers, including Jane Austen, the Shelley Circle, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Aphra Behn. 'Ground-breaking it reads quickly and lightly. Even Todd's throwaway lines are steeped in learning' Women's Review of Books 'A major biography; of interest to everyone who cares about women as writers' Times Higher Education Supplement
1816 was the fateful year when the Romantic poet Shelley and his lover Mary shared a hectic creative and sexual menage in Switzerland with Lord Byron. This intense period drew from the men some of the greatest poetry of the age; from Mary, it elicited the seminal figures of Frankenstein and his Creature. But for other women close to Shelley it was a time of tragedy. At the heart of the story are Fanny Wollstonecraft and Harriet Westbrook, women whose lives were literally overwhelmed by him – and who both committed suicide before the year was out. "Not only a splendid work of feminist history, this is an important addition to late 18th- and early 19-century literary criticism." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn; for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds,' said Virginia Woolf. Yet that tomb, in Westminster Abbey, records one of the few uncontested facts about this Restoration playwright, poet, novelist and spy: the date of her death, 16 April 1689. For the rest secrecy and duplicity are almost the key to her life. She loved codes, making and breaking them; writing her life becomes a decoding of a passionate but playful woman. Janet Todd draws on documents she has rediscovered in the Dutch archives, and on Behn's own writings, to tell a story of court, diplomatic and sexual intrigue, and of the rise from humble origins of the first woman to earn her living as a professional writer. Aphra Behn's first notable employment was as a Royal spy in Holland; she had probably also spied in Surinam. It was not until she was in her thirties that she published the first of the 19 plays and other works which established her fame (though not riches) among her 'good, sweet, honey-candied readers'. Many of her works were openly erotic, indeed as frank as anything by her friends Wycherley and Rochester. Some also offered an inside view of court and political intrigues, and Todd reveals the historical scandals and legal cases behind some of Behn's most famous 'fictions'.
The combination of Mary Wollstonecraft works, with her efforts to live a revolutionary inner and outer life has no equal. In her richly detailed, all-encompassing biography of the first major feminist in England, Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd highlights her intellectual and sexual dilemmas, her glamorous and tumultuous life and loves. Since the first publication of Mary Wollstonecraft: A revolutionary Life in 2000, further historical evidence has been discovered – a letter to Count Bernsdorf in 1795 – and Janet Todd has revised this 2014 Bloomsbury Reader edition of her biography to reflect the new perspective this letter gives to some of the events.
They were known as the Ascendancy, the dashing aristocratic elite that controlled Irish politics and society at the end of the eighteenth century—and at their pinnacle stood Caroline and Robert King, Lord and Lady Kingsborough of Mitchelstown Castle. Heirs to ancient estates and a vast fortune, Lord and Lady Kingsborough appeared to be blessed with everything but marital love—which only made the scandal that tore through their family more shocking. In 1798, at the height of a rebellion that was setting Ireland ablaze, Robert King was tried for the murder of his wife’s cousin—a crime born of passion that proved to have extraordinary political implications. In her brilliant new book, Janet Todd unfolds the fascinating story of how this powerful Anglo-Irish family became entwined with the downfall not only of their class, but of their very way of life. Like Amanda Foreman’s bestselling Georgiana, Daughters of Ireland brings to life the world of a glittering elite in an age of international revolution. When her daughters, Margaret and Mary, were at their most impressionable, Lady Kingsborough hired the firebrand feminist Mary Wollstonecraft to be their governess, little realizing how radically this would alter both girls’ beliefs and characters. The tall, striking Margaret went on to provide crucial support to the United Irishmen in the days leading up to the Rebellion of 1798, while soft, pleasing Mary indulged in an illicit, and all but incestuous love affair that precipitated multiple tragedies. As the Kingsboroughs imploded, the most powerful and colorful figures of the day were swept up in their drama—the dashing aristocrat turned revolutionary Lord Edward Fitzgerald; the liberal, cultivated Countess of Moira, a terrible snob despite her support of Irish revolutionaires; the notorious philanderer Colonel George King, whose sexual debauchery was matched only by his appalling cruelty; Britain’s cold calculating prime minister William Pitt and its mad ruler King George III. With irresistible narrative drive and richly intimate historic detail, Daughters of Ireland an absolutely spellbinding work of history, biography, passion, and rebellion.
In this book, Janet Todd, one of the leading authorities on seventeenth- and eighteenth century women writers, discusses gender issues from the Restoration to Romanticism investigating women authors and the fascination with culturally privileged art and with heroic death.
This is the first study of the posthumous life of Aphra Behn, the extraordinary vicissitudes of her critical reception, and the personal vilifications of her reputation through three centuries. Beginning with the reception of Behn's work during her lifetime, which she herself helped to orchestrate by performing herself as a seductive woman, a beleaguered lady writer, and a serious intellectual, among other roles, the work ends with the late 20th-century reception of Behn, when the interest in gender, race, and class has made of her almost a postmodern writer. In the 17th century she was seen as a playwright of sexy and propagandist comedies, and attacked by those who disapproved her supposedly unfeminine stance and her royalist politics. Later, as the Restoration period itself fell into disrepute, Behn's plays were denigrated along with those of her fellow men, but greater opprobrium fell on her as a woman, because in the 19th century it was felt that a female writer should have higher morals than a man. During this period, Behn's reputation was exceedingly low, while her short story Oroonoko gained acclaim, freed from any association with its author or her supposedly squalid times. In the 18th and 19th centuries Oroonoko moved from being viewed as political commentary and heroic romance to a sentimental tale of doomed love and then an abolitionist text. In the early twentieth century it was hailed as one of the earliest realist texts, part of the great English ascent into the novel. JANET TODD is professor of English at the University of East Anglia
Jane Austen is unique among British novelists in maintaining her popular appeal while receiving more scholarly attention now than ever before. This innovative introduction by a leading scholar and editor of her work explains what students need to know about her novels, life, context and reception. Each novel is discussed in detail, and all the essential information about her life and literary influences, her novels and letters, and her impact on later literature and culture is covered. While the book considers the key areas of current critical focus its analysis remains thoroughly grounded in readings of the texts themselves. Janet Todd outlines what makes Austen's prose style so innovative and gives useful starting points for the study of the major works, with suggestions for further reading. This book is an essential purchase for all students of Austen, as well as for readers wanting to deepen their appreciation of the novels.
A seven volume set of books containing all the known published writings and translations of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is generally recognised as the mother of the feminist movement. She was also an acute observer of the political upheavals of the French revolution and advocated educational reform.
A seven volume set of books containing all the known published writings and translations of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is generally recognised as the mother of the feminist movement. She was also an acute observer of the political upheavals of the French revolution and advocated educational reform.
A seven volume set of books containing all the known published writings and translations of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is generally recognised as the mother of the feminist movement. She was also an acute observer of the political upheavals of the French revolution and advocated educational reform.
First published in 1976, this was the first comprehensive annotated bibliography of Mary Wollstonecraft’s works and most of the critical and biographical comments on her in English written between 1788 and 1975. It is designed both as a research tool for scholars and students and as a revelation of the quantity and variety of comment. The book is divided into three main chronological time periods of publication date and suggests the vagaries of Wollstonecraft’s posthumous reputation and indicates the peaks and troughs of interest. Known as an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights, Mary Wollstonecraft has received much critical attention with particular interest in her unorthodox lifestyle of the time and is now regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers.
The cult of sensibility jangled the nerves of Europe in the mid-eighteenth century. It touched all literary genres and brought into prominence those qualities of tenderness, compassion, sympathy and irrational benevolence associated with women by the binary psychology of the time. It privileged spontaneous emotion and found this expressed in the bodily manifestations of tears, fainting fits, flushes and palpitations. Valuing the pure victim, it took as its archetypes the innocent dying Clarissa and the benevolent, suffering man of feeling. In Sensibility, originally published in 1986, Janet Todd charts the growth and decline of sentimental writing as a privileged mode in the eighteenth century. She shows how sentimental writing is riven with contradictions: while it applauds fellowship, it also expresses a yearning for isolation, and while it stresses the ties of friendship and family, it does so at the expense of sexual feeling, which grows menacing and destructive. By the 1770s, as the idea of sensibility was losing ground, ‘sentimentality’ came in as a pejorative term. Janet Todd ends her study of sensibility by detailing the various attacks on the cult, from radicals and conservatives, feminists and Christian moralists; from Coleridge who saw it as unmanning the nation to Jane Austen who considered it an elaborate sham
A seven volume set of books containing all the known published writings and translations of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is generally recognised as the mother of the feminist movement. She was also an acute observer of the political upheavals of the French revolution and advocated educational reform.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the fourth volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.
A seven volume set of books containing all the known published writings and translations of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is generally recognised as the mother of the feminist movement. She was also an acute observer of the political upheavals of the French revolution and advocated educational reform.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the final volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the fifth volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the first volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works. This volume is a collection of her poetry.
Both men and women took part in the education debate that culminated in the 1790s with Wollstonecraft, More and Edgeworth, but positions and arguments were laid down long before by Fordyce, Gregory, Gisbourne, West, Macaulay and Chapone, as featured in this text.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the sixth volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the third volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the second volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.
A seven volume set of books containing all the known published writings and translations of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is generally recognised as the mother of the feminist movement. She was also an acute observer of the political upheavals of the French revolution and advocated educational reform.
Chestnut Hill Local columnists Mike Todd, Janet Gilmore, Hugh Gilmore, and Jim Harris, (L-R), have not only survived in the troubled and struggling newspaper business, they have amassed a devoted following of fans who shower them with lavish presents like scrapple, bowling balls, and money from Nigerian bank accounts. Until recently, their columns were available only to the readers of the Local, but now you, too, can "LOL" as: Hugh warns of the "Enemies of Reading" Janet remembers old friends, old flames and ex-coworkers Mike deals with wrens, ferrets, and a pregnant wife in his house Jim dispenses dubious advice and rails against the system They each have their own style and shtick, but they share a love of language and an innate ability to find the humor in everyday life. Not since Ben Franklin dined alone at the Mermaid Inn has Chestnut Hill seen such a concentration of comedic talent. Here, from among their hundreds of articles, hand-picked by a rigorous process of "One potato, two potato," is a rollicking roundup of mirthful monologues for your gracious consideration.
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