The Romantic-era witch was a remarkably flexible symbol of political and social disorder. The then-recent seventeenth-century witch hunts had already revealed deep anxieties about the subversive potential of women, and the witches who stalk the pages of Gothic poetry and prose or glare menacingly from works of art by Henry Fuseli and William Blake embody revolutionary anger and the possibility of radical social transformation. Despite the fears surrounding such figures, however, the Romant...

Convinced that the end of the world was at hand, many Romantic women writers assumed the role of the female prophet to sound the alarm before the final curtain fell. Orianne Smith argues that their prophecies were performative acts in which the prophet believed herself to be authorized by God to bring about social or religious transformation through her words. Utilizing a wealth of archival material across a wide range of historical documents, including sermons, prophecies, letters and dia...

Regularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.

Regularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.

Regularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.

Regularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.

Published in 1796, M.G. Lewis'Äôs 'The Monk' stands as a seminal work of Gothic fiction, weaving a complex tapestry of intrigue, passion, and religious ambivalence. The narrative follows the tragic figure of Ambrosio, a pious monk whose descent into depravity is orchestrated by the machinations of a mysterious figure. Lewis employs rich, evocative prose interlaced with sensuous imagery and an undercurrent of psychological tension, reflecting the anxieties of a society grappling with Enligh...

Each play Illustrated with Illustrations unique to this release, over 350 Illustrations in total.Biography and literary critique includes annotated inline footnotes.The Plays.The Comedies of William Shakespeare.All's Well That Ends Well. (Illustrated)As You Like It. (Illustrated)Comedy of Errors. (Illustrated)Cymbeline. (Illustrated)Love's Labour's Lost. (Illustrated)Mea...

In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Matthew Beaumont shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: the fetid, treacherous streets known to Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations; the feverish ramblings of opium addict Thomas De Quincey; and, among the lamp-lit literary throng, the supreme nightwalker Charles Dickens. We discover how the nocturnal city has inspired some and served as a balm or narcotic to others....

A seventeen-year-old chevalier meets a girl being sent to a convent against her will, and throws over his family, his studies and eventually his honor to keep her — repeatedly, each time worse. Prévost was a Benedictine who twice fled his order; the book was burned in Paris and read everywhere, and gave opera two of its warhorses. Its cruelty is that neither lover can be blamed and neither can stop. Its 77 original illustrations have been carefully restored and coloured for this edition.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, written ca. 1845-1846 and first published in 1850, is a collection of forty-four love sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poems largely chronicle the period leading up to her 1846 marriage to Robert Browning. The collection was acclaimed and popular even in the poet's lifetime and it remains so today. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Initially dismissed as "a dead failure" and "a bad book," and declined by Melville's British publisher, Pierre has since struck critics as modern in its psychological probings and literary technique—fit, as Carl Van Vechten said in 1922, to be ranked with The Golden Bowl, Women in Love, and Ulysses. None of Melville's other "secondary" works has so regularly been acknowledged by its most thorough critics as a work of genuine grandeur, however flawed. When Pierre Glendinning's lifelong desi...