This new essay collection brings together some of the top BrontA" scholars working today, as well as new critical voices, to examine the many layers of Anne BrontA"'s fiction and other writings and to restore BrontA" to her rightful place in literary history. Until very recently, BrontA"'s literary fate has been to live in the critical shadow of her older sisters, Charlotte and Emily, in spite of the fact that her two published novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall were widely read and discussed during her lifetime. From a variety of fields-including psychology, religion, social criticism and literary tradition-the contributors to New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne BrontA" re-assess her works as those of an artist, which demand the rigorous scholarship and attention that they receive here.

Writing during periods of dramatic social change, Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell were both attracted to the idea of radical societal transformation at the same time that their writings express nostalgia for a traditional, paternalistic ruling class. The author shows how this tension is played out especially through the characters of servants in short fiction and novels such as Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Belinda, and Helen and Gaskell's North and South and Cranford. Servant characters, the author contends, enable these writers to give voice to the contradictions inherent in the popular paternalistic philosophy of their times because the situation of domestic servitude itself embodies such inconsistencies. Servants, whose labor was essential to the economic and social function of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British society, made up the largest category of workers in England by the nineteenth century and yet were expected to be socially invisible. At the same time, they lived in the same houses as their masters and mistresses and were privy to the most intimate details of their lives. Both Edgeworth and Gaskell created servant characters who challenge the social hierarchy, thus exposing the potential for dehumanization and corruption inherent in the paternalistic philosophy. the author's study opens up important avenues for future scholars of women's fiction in the nineteenth century.

Devoted to the varied writings of the influential novelist, children's author, and educator, this collection situates Edgeworth's writing in the context of her life and times. Combining postcolonial, historical, and gender criticism, the contributors offer fresh readings of Edgeworth's novels, stories, letters, and educational texts, including Belinda, Moral Tales, Practical Education, Helen, and The Absentee. Throughout her work, Edgeworth confronts a world whose values, while grounded in tradition and supported by slavery and colonial domination, are being challenged and ultimately changed in surprising ways by women, peasants, servants, and other voices from the margins. In discussing Edgeworth and her writing, the contributors also offer innovative perspectives on the novel and other central issues of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. The collection will be invaluable to established scholars working in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, women's studies, and children's literature, as well as to students encountering Edgeworth for the first time.

Devoted to the varied writings of the influential novelist, children's author, and educator, this collection situates Edgeworth's writing in the context of her life and times. Combining postcolonial, historical, and gender criticism, the contributors offer fresh readings of Edgeworth's novels, stories, letters, and educational texts, including Belinda, Moral Tales, Practical Education, Helen, and The Absentee. Throughout her work, Edgeworth confronts a world whose values, while grounded in tradition and supported by slavery and colonial domination, are being challenged and ultimately changed in surprising ways by women, peasants, servants, and other voices from the margins. In discussing Edgeworth and her writing, the contributors also offer innovative perspectives on the novel and other central issues of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. The collection will be invaluable to established scholars working in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, women's studies, and children's literature, as well as to students encountering Edgeworth for the first time.

Writing during periods of dramatic social change, Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell were both attracted to the idea of radical societal transformation at the same time that their writings express nostalgia for a traditional, paternalistic ruling class. The author shows how this tension is played out especially through the characters of servants in short fiction and novels such as Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Belinda, and Helen and Gaskell's North and South and Cranford. Servant characters, the author contends, enable these writers to give voice to the contradictions inherent in the popular paternalistic philosophy of their times because the situation of domestic servitude itself embodies such inconsistencies. Servants, whose labor was essential to the economic and social function of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British society, made up the largest category of workers in England by the nineteenth century and yet were expected to be socially invisible. At the same time, they lived in the same houses as their masters and mistresses and were privy to the most intimate details of their lives. Both Edgeworth and Gaskell created servant characters who challenge the social hierarchy, thus exposing the potential for dehumanization and corruption inherent in the paternalistic philosophy. the author's study opens up important avenues for future scholars of women's fiction in the nineteenth century.

This new essay collection brings together some of the top BrontA" scholars working today, as well as new critical voices, to examine the many layers of Anne BrontA"'s fiction and other writings and to restore BrontA" to her rightful place in literary history. Until very recently, BrontA"'s literary fate has been to live in the critical shadow of her older sisters, Charlotte and Emily, in spite of the fact that her two published novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall were widely read and discussed during her lifetime. From a variety of fields-including psychology, religion, social criticism and literary tradition-the contributors to New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne BrontA" re-assess her works as those of an artist, which demand the rigorous scholarship and attention that they receive here.

Castle Rackrent-Maria Edgeworth's first novel, and the work for which she was and is best known-occupies a most unusual place in the history both of Irish literature and of English-language fiction. It has sometimes been called the first historical novel in English literature, yet in its tone it more closely resembles a comedy of manners than anything in the genre that has come to be known as "the historical novel." It has been identified as the first of other lines as well-the first English novel written in a non-standard dialect, the first "provincial" or "regional" novel, and the first in what developed into the "big house" tradition of novels focused on the lives of the Anglo-Irish Protestant landholding class that dominated much of Ireland for centuries. Its innovative use of an unreliable narrator makes it also, arguably, an important milestone in the development of the novel form as a whole. Castle Rackrent chronicles the declining fortunes and ultimate ruin of the Rackrent family through the mishandling of their estate by a series of incompetent and irresponsible heirs. Edgeworth attested in a letter she wrote years later that "the only character drawn from the life" in the novel is Thady Quirk (servant to the Rackrent family, and the novel's narrator). But the novel as a whole is grounded in real events-the careless landlords and the "middle men who grind the face of the poor" described in Edgeworth's fiction were very real in eighteenth-century Ireland. This edition does more than any other to set this classic novel in the political, economic, and religious context of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Irish life; in addition to an illuminating introduction, the edition includes a variety of background historical materials.