This Week's Acquisitions
- James Hogg, The Three Perils of Woman (Edinburgh, 2002). Scholarly edition of Hogg's controversial 1823 novel, set partly in the then-present day and partly in 1746. (For the title, cf. Hogg's somewhat better-known The Three Perils of Man: War, Women, and Witchcraft.) More about the book at the indispensable British Fiction 1800-1829, including some snark from Walter Scott.
- John Gardner, The Sunlight Dialogues (NDP, 2006). Mysterious criminal activity in Batavia, NY. See The Arch and the Abyss for more about Gardner. (In case you're wondering, Batavia is not far from Brockport; one of my emeritus colleagues did the scholarly apparatus for Gardner's translation of Gilgamesh.)
- Lisa Rodensky, ed., Decadent Poetry (Penguin, 2007). Wilde, Davidson, Johnson, "Michael Field," etc.
- Kate Grenville, The Secret River (Canongate, 2006). Convicts and the birth of New South Wales.
- Charles Butler, An Address to the Protestants of Great Britain and Ireland (Hansard, 1813). Pamphlet on Catholic civil rights (or the lack thereof). Butler was a well-known Catholic lawyer, historian, and controversialist; see the New Advent Encyclopedia for a brief biographical sketch and the National Portrait Gallery for a portrait engraving.
- Thomas Le Mesurier, A Counter Address to the Protestants of Great Britain and Ireland: In Answer to the Address of Charles Butler, Esq (Hansard, 1813). Critical response to the above. Le Mesurier's Bampton Lectures are online.
- C. J. Blomfield, Bishop of Chester, A Letter to Charles Butler, Esq. Of Lincoln's Inn in Vindication of English Protestants From His Attack on Their Sincerity in the "Book of the Roman Catholic Church," 3rd ed. (J. Mawman, 1825). Blomfield is responding to Butler's response to Robert Southey's Book of the Church. Very brief overview of Blomfield here.