This Week's Acquisitions

Mrs. [Martha] Sherwood, The History of the Fairchild Family; Or the Child's Manual (Nisbet, n.d.). Perhaps the most (in)famous example of Victorian evangelical children's fiction. There's an e-text available at Roehampton University. For Mrs. Sherwood, see West Midlands Literary Heritage.
Emma Leslie, Peter the Apprentice: A Tale of the Reformation in England (RTS, n.d.). The beginnings of the English Reformation (the novel opens in 1525), with some reference to Anne Boleyn as a Protestant heroine. Part of the Religious Tract Society's late-19th c. "For Faith and Freedom" series.

Emily Sarah Holt, In Convent Walls: The Story of the Despensers (Robert Carter & Bros., n.d.). Set in the early fourteenth century.

Edith Wharton, Hudson River Bracketed (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985). Reprint of Wharton's 1929 novel about an aspiring novelist. There's an e-text at Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Beryl Bainbridge, Young Adolf (Carroll & Graf, 1995). Satirical novel about a youthful Adolf Hitler's experiences in England.

Wesley Stace, Misfortune (Little, Brown, 2005). In Victorian England, a peer raises a foundling boy as a girl.

Arthur Robert Pennington, M.A., John Wiclif: His Life, Times, and Teaching (SPCK, 1884). Wycliffe's role in shaping the Reformation, with more attention than usual to the problem of determining what and when Wycliffe published.

I. J. Blunt, Sketch of the English Reformation, 16th ed. (William Tegg, 1846). Popular survey. The very elaborate bookplate identifies this as a prize awarded by "The Association Incorporated for Discountenancing Vice and Promoting the Knowledge & Practice of the Christian Religion," which was an Irish evangelical society.

J. W. Burrow, Evolution & Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge, 1966). Classic work of intellectual history, touching on the origins of anthropology and sociology.

Michael Alpert, London 1849: A Victorian Murder Story (Longman, 2004). The scandalous murder of Frederick Manning by his wife and her lover. There's an account of the case at Capital Punishment U.K. Maria apparently was the inspiration for Hortense in Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Propets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (Houghton-Mifflin, 2005). The British abolitionist movement.

Jane Stabler, Byron, Poetics and History (Cambridge, 2002). Focuses on Byron's strategic use of digression.

Catherine Robson, Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of the Victorian Gentleman (Princeton, 2001). Representations of girls by male authors, and their larger implications for Victorian ideas about manhood.