Synopses & Reviews
Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) was the author of ten novels, a play, and a host of innovative educational books for children, as well as several volumes of poetry that helped set priorities and determine the tastes of the culture of early Romanticism. Her Elegiac Sonnets sparked the sonnet revival in English Romanticism; The Emigrants initiated its passion for lengthy meditative introspection; and Beachy Head lent its poetic engagement with nature a uniquely telling immediacy. Smith was a woman, Wordsworth remarked a quarter century after her death, "to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be either acknowledged or remembered." True to his prediction, Smith's poetry has virtually dropped from sight and thus from cultural consciousness. This, the first edition of Smith's collected poems, will restore to all students of English poetry a distinctive, compelling voice. Likewise, the recovery of Smith to her rightful place among the Romantic poets must spur the reassessment of the place of women writers within that culture.
Review
"Excellent notes--long-overdue work--beautifully designed."--Nicholas Jones, Oberlin College
Praise for the series: "Publishing these previously unknown or ignored volumes by women will revolutionize the canon of English and American literature taught in graduate and undergraduate courses. The list of texts is impressive. It includes some of the most important scholarship now under way in the field of Renaissance literature."--Margaret Hannay, Siena College
"Making these writers available in an easily accessible form contributes significantly not only to feminist scholarship, which has been seeking to recover the works of such writers for two decades, but also to teaching and scholarship more generally within the humanities, from the freshman level to the most specialized postgraduate level."--Marlon Ross, University of Michigan
"The texts chosen form an extremely interesting and quite varied group, and the prospect of having them in book form is exciting. Scholars and students will be much richer for it."--Carolyn Dinshaw, University of California, Berkeley