This (Last Two) Weeks' Acquisitions
[Back in NY! There are books here!]
- [May Ramsay], Maggie's Rosary, and Other Tales, ed. Mrs. Washington Hibbert (Burnes and Oates [c. 1871]). Collection of Catholic didactic fiction for children about praying the rosary, telling the truth, working-class Catholics, etc. (eBay)
- Cecilia Mary Caddell, The Miner's Daughter: A Simple Explanation of, and Easy and Familiar Instruction on, the Sacrifice of the Mass (P. J. Kenedy, 1897). A book for Catholic children and converts explaining (using a fictional framework) what the mass is, what the prayers are, and so forth; originally published in the UK in the early 1860s. (eBay)
- Simon Mawer, The Gospel of Judas (Little, Brown, 2000). Catholic priest starts studying what appears to be a "fifth Gospel," with obvious consequences for his personal life. (Amazon [secondhand])
- Katherine McMahon, After Mary (Flamingo, 2000). Historical novel about a young English Catholic woman who becomes involved in recusant politics during the seventeenth century. (Amazon [secondhand])
- Lori Marie Carlson, A Stitch in Air (Texas Tech, 2013). Historical novel set in sixteenth-century Spain, following the goings-on in a somewhat unusual convent. (Amazon [secondhand])
- Robert Rankin, The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions (Gollancz, 2010). Steampunk novel featuring a P. T. Barnumesque showman in a post-War of the Worlds universe. (eBay)
- Elizabeth Taylor, A Game of Hide and Seek (NYRB, 2012). Reprint of Taylor's 1951 novel about an interrupted romance that is then resumed...sort of. On a syllabus this semester. (Barnes & Noble)
- Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox (Riverhead, 2011). Metafictional romance in which happily ever after has a bad habit of not happening in one author's work. Also on a syllabus. (Barnes & Noble)
- Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr, eds., Ten Books that Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons (Duke, 2014). Collection of essays examining how both imperialist and anti-imperialist works by a variety of authors (from Bronte to Gandhi) helped establish a "lively, empire-wide print culture." (Amazon)
- Elizabeth Elbourne, Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799-1853 (MQUP, 2008). Uses the London Missionary Society's attempts to evangelize the Khoekhoe to examine the interplay between religious, imperial, and local politics in early 19th-c. South Africa. (Amazon [secondhand])