The Little Professor

This Week's Month's Acquisitions

(Lots of antiquarian books this month.)

  • The Thrilling Mysteries of a Convent Revealed! (United States Protestant Association, 1854).  Reprint of an anti-Catholic historical novel! First appeared in 1835! About the evils of convent life! In France! Often published with The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk! Is very emphatic!  (eBay)
  • George Eliel Sargent, Langdon Manor: Scenes and Sketches in the History of a Family Bible (RTS, 1880).  Bible "it-narrative" along the lines of Sargent's bestselling Story of a Pocket Bible, but considerably shorter.  More about Sargent here.  (eBay)
  • Mrs. J. [Mary Anne] Sadlier, Willie Burke; Or, the Irish Orphan in America (Thomas H. Noonan, n.d.).  Catholic novel about the experience of a young Irish immigrant, which was one of Mrs. Sadlier's favorite topics.  See the Mary Anne Sadlier Archive for further information about her work.   (eBay)
  • Hesba Stretton, Michel Lorio's Cross (Dodd, Mead, n.d.).  US reprint of this short children's novel set in Normandy, about a shunned Protestant who heroically saves a child's life.  Stretton (really Sarah Smith) was one of the most successful religious novelists of the Victorian period; see her biographical overview at West Midlands Literary Heritage.  (eBay)
  • George Henry Miles, The Truce of God: A Tale of the Eleventh Century (Catholic Publication Co., 1878).  2nd ed. of this 1871 historical novel, tracing Pope Gregory VII's struggles with Henry IV.  There's a brief memoir of Miles available at the Emmitsburg Area Historical Society.  (eBay)
  • Cecilia Mary Caddell, Nellie Netterville; Or, One of the Transplanted (Catholic Publication Society, 1891).  US reprint of Caddell's historical novel about Cromwell's treatment of Ireland.  (eBay)
  • A. M., Montmorency: A Roman Catholic Tale (Seeley, Burnside, & Seeley, 1848).  Volume reprint of a novel originally published in the Protestant Magazine (and which I discussed here).  Pretty much disbound.  (eBay)
  • Mary Frances Tupper, The Ritualists.  Beware! They are Fooling Thee (Middle Hill Press, n.d.).  A single poem issued by the eccentric Sir Thomas Phillipps and written by the daughter of Martin Farquhar Tupper.  (I'll have a post about this later in the week.)  (eBay)
  • Richard Peabody, ed., Alice Redux: New Stories of Alice, Lewis, and Wonderland (Paycock Press, 2005).   What it says on the tin: revisionist tales based on Alice in Wonderland.  (Amazon)
  • Charles Johnstone, Chrysal: Or, the Adventures of a Guinea, ed. Kevin Bourque, 2 vols. (Valancourt, 2011).  Reprint of one of the most famous eighteenth-century it-narratives, following the travels of, yes, a coin.  (Amazon)
  • Wendy Wallace, The Painted Bridge (Scribner, 2012).  Neo-Victorian novel set in an insane asylum, to which a young woman has been unwillingly consigned by her husband.  (Amazon)
  • Lawrence Norfolk, John Saturnall's Feast (Grove, 2012).  In seventeenth-century England, an impoverished boy rises to success as a cook--and becomes embroiled in matters that are considerably above his "station."  (Lift Bridge)
  • Grace Moore, The Victorian Novel in Context (Continuum, 2012).  A concise critical survey designed for classroom use.  (Courtesy of the author)
  • Royal A. Gettmann, A Victorian Publisher: A Study of the Bentley Papers (Cambridge UP, 2010).  Reprints Gettmann's classic study of the Richard Bentley publishing archives.  (Amazon)
  • Michael Scrivener, Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780-1840: After Shylock (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).  The ghost of Shylock in later anti-Jewish stereotypes, as well as attempts to contest them.  (Amazon [secondhand])
  • Ruth Clayton Windscheffel, Reading Gladstone (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).  An intellectual history of William Gladstone's reading and collecting practices, based on his surviving library at St. Deiniol's.  (Amazon [secondhand])
  • Christopher Lane, The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty (Yale, 2011).  An intellectual history of Victorian religious anxiety and its afterlife in contemporary culture.  (Amazon [secondhand])
buying-books this-weeks-acquisitions