Written in the 1750s (and never before published) by the Scottish physician Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding members of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, the History is a mock-heroic narrative of ten years in the life of an 18th century social club. It is a political satire representing the gamut of 18th century wit--pseudo- learned essays and digressions, bombastic letters and speeches, doggerel verse, riddles and conundrums, scatological humor and polite smut. Editor Micklus (American literature, SUNY Binghamton) provides introductory and explanatory discussion.
"Masterful...A big story about human connection and emotional survival" - Los Angeles Times The first book ever chosen by Oprah's Book Club Few first novels receive the kind of attention and acclaim showered on this powerful story—a nationwide bestseller, a critical success, and the first title chosen for Oprah's Book Club. Both highly suspenseful and deeply moving, The Deep End of the Ocean imagines every mother's worst nightmare—the disappearance of a child—as it explores a family's struggle to endure, even against extraordinary odds. Filled with compassion, humor, and brilliant observations about the texture of real life, here is a story of rare power, one that will touch readers' hearts and make them celebrate the emotions that make us all one.
From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments—one of Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the center of this intricate novel like a spider in a web. The glamorous, irresistible, unscrupulous Zenia is nothing less than a fairy-tale villain in the memories of her former friends. Roz, Charis, and Tony—university classmates decades ago—were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and have met monthly for lunch ever since, obsessively retracing the destructive swath she once cut through their lives. A brilliantly inventive fabulist, Zenia had a talent for exploiting her friends’ weaknesses, wielding intimacy as a weapon and cheating them of money, time, sympathy, and men. But one day, five years after her funeral, they are shocked to catch sight of Zenia: even her death appears to have been yet another fiction. As the three women plot to confront their larger-than-life nemesis, Atwood proves herself a gleefully acute observer of the treacherous shoals of friendship, trust, desire, and power.
Organized primarily in terms of genre, this handbook includes original research on key concepts, as well as analysis of interesting texts from throughout colonial America. Separate chapters are devoted to literary genres of great importance at the time of their composition that have been neglected in recent decades.
The forerunner of today's book clubs, nineteenth-century literary societies provided a lively social and intellectual forum where people could gather and discuss books, cultural affairs, and current events. In Come bright Improvement!, Heather Murray explores the literary societies of Ontario between 1820 and 1900 - some of which are still in existence today - and examines the extent to which they mirrored or challenged contemporary social, political, and intellectual trends. Based on a wealth of original research with periodicals and local archival materials, Murray traces the evolution from early political and debating clubs to more dedicated literary and cultural societies, such as Shakespeare or Browning groups. Many people formed literary societies, including workers, women, Black fugitives, and members of religious denominations such as Quakers and Methodists. Murray studies the societies in detail, exploring everything from the reading materials they favoured to the other kinds of social and civic activities in which they participated. Of additional interest to scholars of book history if the book's resource guide, which records the location, history, and archival deposits of several hundred societies. A first in the study of the book club phenomenon, Come, bright Improvement! is a wonderful introduction to nineteenth-century Ontario, the history of book studies, and the history of reading.
In this sweeping biography, Elaine G. Breslaw examines the life of Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1712--1756), a highly educated Scottish physician who immigrated to Maryland in 1738. From an elite European family, Hamilton was immediately confronted with the relatively primitive social milieu of the New World. He faced unfamiliar and challenging social institutions: the labor system that relied on black slaves, extraordinarily fluid social statuses, distasteful business methods, unpleasant conversational quirks, as well as variant habits of dress, food, and drink that required accommodation and, when possible, acceptance. Paradoxically, the more acclimated he became to Maryland ways, the greater his impulse to change that society and make it more satisfying for himself both emotionally and intellectually. Breslaw perceptively describes the ways in which Hamilton tried to transform the society around him, attempting to re-create the world he had left behind and thereby justify his continued residence in such an unsophisticated place.Hamilton, best known as the author of the Itinerarium -- a shrewd and insightful account of his journey through the colonies in 1744 -- also founded the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, promoted a local musical culture, and in his letters and essays, provided witty commentary on the American social experience. In addition to practicing medicine, Hamilton participated in local affairs, transporting to Maryland some of the rationalist ideas about politics, religion, and learning that were germinating in Scotland's early Enlightenment. As Breslaw explains, Hamilton's writings tell us that those adopted ideas were given substance and vitality in the New World long before the revolutionary crises. Throughout her narrative, Breslaw usefully sets Hamilton's life in both Scotland and America against the background of the major political, military, religious, social, and economic events of his time. The largely forgotten story of a fascinating, cosmopolitan, and complex Scotsman, Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Provincial America illuminates our understanding of elites as they navigated their eighteenth-century world.
