Some of the newest additions to the Literature collections by female authors include:

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Moorland Cottage (1850).  An early novella by Gaskell, which depicts the life of a young girl, Maggie Browne, whose mother mistreats her but spoils her brother Edward.

Lady Anne Isabella Ritchie, Mrs. Dymond (1885).  This novel, by the daughter of author William Makepeace Thackeray, is a family drama set in England’s Lake District and Paris at the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71).

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, All Along the River (1893).  Braddon was a bestselling author of sensation fiction.  The heroine of this novel is tempted to leave her husband, who is away on a tour of duty in India.  Her choice, and its consequences, drive the plot.

David Dowling, Chasing the White Whale: The Moby-Dick Marathon; or, What Melville Means Today.  University of Iowa Press, 2010.

Stanton Garner, The Two Intertwined Narratives in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd: A Study of an Author’s Literary Method.  Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.

Birgit Mara Kaiser,  Figures of Simplicity: Sensation and thinking in Kleist and Melville.  State University of New York Press, 2011.

Jamie Lorentzen, Sober Cannibals, Drunken Christians: Melville, Kierkegaard, and Tragic Optimism in Polarized Worlds.  Mercer University Press, 2010.

Geoffrey Sanborn, Whipscars and Tattoos: The Last of the Mohicans, Moby-Dick, and the Maori.  Oxford University Press, 2011.

• Arthur H. Bell, “The child in Wordsworth’s major poetry: a master metaphor and its implications.”  Lexingford Publishing, 2010.

• Jacqueline Labbe, “Writing romanticism: Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, 1784-1807.”  Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

• Gregory Leadbetter, “Coleridge and the daemonic imagination.”  Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

• Eric Lindstrom, “Romantic fiat: demystification and enchantment in lyric poetry.”  Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

• Reeve Parker, “Romantic tragedies: the dark employments of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley.”  Cambridge University Press, 2011.

These titles may be consulted in Special Collections’ Reading Room during normal operating hours.

“The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit” was acquired with the generous assistance of the Friends of the Harold B. Lee Library.

Her papers contain correspondence, publicity materials, notes that led to novels and copies of Band of Sisters and a grammar guide entitled Their, There, They’re. Lyons materials are MSS 7929 and will be available for research soon.

Douglas Gifford, ed.  Addressing the Bard: Twelve Contemporary Poets Respond to Robert Burns.  (2009)

Cecilia Powell. Savage Grandeur and Noblest Thoughts: Discovering the Lake District 1750-1820. (2010)

Natascha Gentz, ed.  Selected Poems by Robert Burns in Chinese Translation. (2010)

Gaura Shankar Narayan.  Real and Imagined Women in British Romanticism. (2010)

Richard Francis, Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia (2010)

Susan Cheever, Louisa May Alcott (2010)

William C. Spengemann, Three American Poets: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Herman Melville (2010)

John E. Seery, ed., A Political Companion to Walt Whitman (2011)

Matt Miller, Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass (2010)

Special Collections contains examples of penny dreadfuls in loose parts as well as bound sets.  They can be found in the library catalog by searching for “penny dreadfuls,” “suspense fiction,” or “street literature” using the “genre/form” search button.

Like Burns, Little wrote in both Scots and English.  One of Little’s poems even amounts to hero-worship, excitedly describing a visit to Burns’ house in 1791.  Burns did subscribe to the book of poetry Little published in 1792, The Poetical Works of Janet Little, the Scotch Milkmaid.  James Boswell (the biographer of Samuel Johnson) was also a subscriber.

L. Tom Perry Special Collections has recently acquired a copy of Little’s Poetical Works – one of only 800 copies printed.  Little’s poetry interests scholars not only because of its association to Robert Burns, but as an example of Scottish vernacular and working-class literature.

Alice Meynell (1847-1922) began her career as a poet.  She was also an essayist and literary critic.  After her marriage, she assisted her husband in editing several periodicals, for which she wrote many of her essays.  In her last years, Meynell took up poetry again.  The Shepherdess (1914) collects some of these later poems.  Special Collections’ copy of this book is a presentation copy from Meynell, dated November 1914.

May Sinclair (1863-1946) began her writing career with the intent to be a poet and philosopher.  However, she quickly made her mark as a novelist, particularly a novelist who wrote insightfully and frankly about women’s experiences.  Sinclair’s interest in feminism and in the field of psychoanalysis contributed to the narratives of her novels.   The Dark Night (1924) is a novel in verse, which was issued in both a limited run of 350 copies and a commercial run.  Special Collections’ copy is from the limited edition and is signed by the author.