Synopses & Reviews
As it tells the story of Constantia Dudley, from her family's financial collapse to her encounters with a series of cosmopolitan revolutionaries and reactionaries, Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond; or The Secret Witness (1799) develops a sustained meditation on late-Enlightenment debates concerning political liberty, women's rights, conventions of sex-gender, and their relation to the reshaping of an Atlantic world in the throes of transformation.
This edition of Ormond includes Brown's Alcuin (1798), an important dialogue on women's rights and marriage, as well as his key essays on history and literature, along with selections from contemporary writings on women's education and revolution debates that figure in the novel's background and in the charged atmosphere of the late 1790s.
Review
Philip Barnard and Stephen Shapiro have produced an awesome edition of Brown's Ormond by providing copious explanatory notes and helpful documentation of the essential historical context of feminist, radical, egalitarian, and abolitionist expression. Oh, ye patriots, read it and learn! --Peter Linebaugh, University of Toledo
Synopsis
It was now dusk and she hastened to perform this duty. Whiston's dwelling was wooden and of small dimensions. She lifted the latch softly and entered. The lower room was unoccupied. She advanced to the foot of a narrow staircase, and knocked and listened, but no answer was returned to the summons. Hence there was reason to infer that no one was within, but this, from other considerations, was extremely improbable. The truth could be ascertained only by ascending the stair. Some feminine scruples were to be subdued before this proceeding could be adopted.
About the Author
Philip Barnard is Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kansas.Stephen Shapiro is Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick.