The Adventures of Lindamira, A Lady of Quality


Book Description

If you enjoy historical romance novels, you want to read Lindamira… first written as a contemporary romance, it’s historical now because it was written over 300 years ago! What Makes Lindamira a Great Story? The Adventures of Lindamira from 1702 mimics the best of popular late 17th-century French, Spanish, and Italian novels of aristocratic romantic intrigues, with all the emotional ups and downs and the issues that build angst and anticipation to make a riveting tale, yet this story is far more concise, brings the cultural setting down to the upper-middle-class, and provides an innovative true-to-life perspective while including entertaining homages to its foreign-language predecessors' unrealistic tales. Lindamira is young, beautiful, wealthy, independent-minded, and virtuous, but not always as kind and rational as she desires to be. Multiple suitors of various quality pursue her, but the courtship process can be painful and confusing even when things go well, and often they don't go well. Reflecting back on her life, she confides the details in 25 letters to her trusted friend Indamora, in which she confides her romantic adventures, beginning when she was 16 years old. What Else Makes Lindamira So Special? · The first romance novel written in English · The 300-year-old authorship mystery solved · The oldest English romance novel written as contemporary that became historical · Inspiration for the first fan fiction based on an English romance novel · 18th-century international best-seller See the About Lindamira section at the end of the book for details.




Aphra Behn's Afterlife


Book Description

Aphra Behn is significant as an early example of a successful professional woman writer. This analysis of her influence on literature argues the need for a feminist revision of the writer who had literary sons as well as daughters.




Novelists on Novels


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The Works of William Congreve


Book Description

The late D. F. McKenzie worked on this comprehensive edition of the works of the playwright, poet, librettist, and novelist William Congreve for more than twenty years, until his sudden death in 1999. This was a task he had taken over from Herbert Davis, to whom this edition is dedicated. During that time McKenzie uncovered new verse and letters, collated Congreve's texts, recorded their complicated textual history, constructed appendices that shed light on the dramatic context in which Congreve worked, and examined how his contemporaries received Congreve's work. More importantly, McKenzie has convincingly re-evaluated Congreve's works and life to transform our image of the man and his reputation. McKenzie here follows the editorial practice suggested in two early editions of the Works published by Congreve's friend, the bookseller Jacob Tonson, in 1710 and 1719. These three volumes follow a plan similar to that in the Tonson edition, with The Old Batchelor, The Double-Dealer, and Love for Love collected in the first, a central volume with The Way of the World, and a final volume with Congreve's novel Incognita, some of his prose works, letters, and later verse. In each case, Congreve's work is left to speak for itself, unencumbered by intrusive notes, textual apparatus, or collations, which are gathered instead near the end of each volume. This edition will be an invaluable resource for scholars for many years to come. It is a monument to McKenzie's own scholarship as well as to the integrity of William Congreve.




The Eighteenth Century English Novel


Book Description

Early novelists such as Samuel Richardson, Daniel Defoe, and Laurence Sterne helped create the formula for the modern novel.