This Week's Acquisitions
- Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty (Bloomsbury, 2004). The year's third Henry James novel (in a loose sense, anyway). Also won a big prize of some sort.
- Emile Zola, The Kill, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Modern Library, 2004). New translation of Rougon-Macquart #2.
- Wayne Johnston, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (Doubleday, 1998). Historical novel about Newfoundland.
- Irmtraud Morgner, The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice: As Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura. A Novel in Thirteen Books and Seven Intermezzos, trans. Jeanette Clausen (Bison, 2000). First English translation of Morgner's novel about a medieval troubador who, after a magic sleep of over 800 years, wakes up in 1968.
- Jeffrey von Arx, Progress and Pessimism: Religion, Politics, and History in Late Nineteenth Century Britain (Harvard, 1985). How liberal angst over religion affected late-Victorian historiography.
- Tim Jeal, Livingstone (Yale, 2001). As in, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume." First published in 1973.
- Donna T. Andrew and Randall McGowen, The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd: Forgery and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century London (California, 2001). Studies the larger historical ramifications of the 1775 scandal.
- Peter Jagger, Clouded Witness: Initiation in the Church of England in the Mid-Victorian Period, 1850-1875 (Pickwick, 1982). Conflicts over baptism (rites, meaning, etc.).
- Roger Smith, Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian Trials (Edinburgh, 1981). Shifting attitudes to insanity pleas, medical authority in legal contexts, and so forth.
- David Roberts, Paternalism in Early Victorian England (Croom Helm, 1979). Theory and practice of paternalism in the age of industrialism.
- Jane Martineau et al., Shakespeare in Art (Merrell, 2003). Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings, illustrations, and drawings of Shakespeare's plays.