This Week's Acquisitions

  • Emma Marshall, Under Salisbury Spire, in the Days of George Herbert: The Recollections of Magdalene Wydville (Seeley, 1894).  Fictional seventeenth-century memoir featuring, as you might gather, George Herbert.  One of a number of Marshall's novels set around cathedrals. 
  • Harriet Martineau, Deerbrook (Penguin, 2005).  New edition of Martineau's domestic novel.  More on Martineau here and here; the first volume of her Autobiography is at the VWWP.
  • Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale (Penguin, 1991).  A tale of two sisters, from the mid-Victorian age to the twentieth century.  Brief biography of Bennett and several e-texts courtesy of Literary Heritage: West Midlands.
  • Adam Thorpe, The Rules of Perspective (Henry Holt, 2006).  Art and violence intertwine during the final days of WWII.
  • Graham Greene, The Complete Short Stories (Penguin, 2005).  Includes some stories never before collected.
  • Claire Messud, The Emperor's Children (Knopf, 2006).  Would-be culture mavens in 2001.
  • Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night: A Confession (Norton, 2006).  Neo-Victorian thriller. (Oh, dear: am I hearing the adjective "Dickensian" floating about?)
  • Rosemary Erickson Johnsen, Contemporary Feminist Historical Crime Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).  I'm reviewing this for Choice
  • Mary McKerrow, Mary Brunton: The Forgotten Scottish Novelist (Orcadian, 2001).  Brunton was a popular novelist in the early nineteenth century.  Jane Austen's comments plus e-texts here; biographical sketch by Ruth Facer at Chawton House
  • Brian Stanley, ed., Christian Missions and the Enlightenment (Eerdmans, 2001). The Scottish Enlightenment's effect on the theory and practice of Protestant missions.
  • Lectures Delivered Before the Young Men's Christian Association, in Exeter Hall..., 16 vols. (James Nisbet).  A nearly-complete set of these lectures, which were delivered annually between November and February.