During the 19th century, death shadowed daily life. A high infant mortality rate, poor sanitation, risk during childbirth, poisons, ignorance, and war kept 19th-century Americans busy practicing the ritual of mourning. The Victorian era in both Europe and America saw these rituals elevated to an art form expressing not only grief, but also religious feeling, social obligation, and even mourning fashion. Complete with period illustrations, Widow's Weeds and Weeping Veils explores how Victorians viewed death and dying as a result of the profound historical events of their time. This concise, informative work is ideal for students of Victorian-era culture and Civil War enthusiasts.
The Camarilla, after losing ground along the East Coast in its recent war with the Sabbat, has claimed control of New York City at last. Now the story of their covert activities and greatest victories is finally told.
One Million Words of Terror It began with Clan Novel: Toreador .... This book, Clan Novel: Tremere, is the twelvth in a 13-novel series concerning the Kindred -- the hugest event ever in the World of Darkness. From small details to grand spectacles, this epic series of one million words reveals the secrets of this hidden world through the eyes of individuals on both sides of a great conflict. The continued existence of all Kindred, from the youngest to the eldest Methuselah, hangs in the The Last of His Kind Further examination of the sketch that sent the Toreador Victoria Ash to Atlanta now reveals deeper secrets to Aisling Sturbridge, the leader of the Tremere chantry in New York City. A traitor in the ranks of the hierarchical Tremere, who was thought is discovered -- and he might be the very cause of the Camarilla/Sabbat war!
The Profession of Widowhood explores how the idea of ‘true’ widowhood was central to pre-modern ideas concerning marriage and of female identity more generally. The medieval figure of the Christian vere vidua or “good” widow evolved from and reinforced ancient social and religious sensibilities of chastity, loyalty and grief as gendered ‘work.’ The ideal widow was a virtuous woman who mourned her dead husband in chastity, solitude, and most importantly, in perpetuity, marking her as “a widow indeed” (1 Tim 5:5). The widow who failed to display adequate grief fulfilled the stereotype of the ‘merry widow’ who forgot her departed spouse and abused her sexual and social freedom. Stereotypes of widows ‘good’ and ‘bad’ served highly-charged ideological functions in pre-modern culture, and have remained durable even in modern times, even as Western secular society now focuses more on a woman’s recovery from grief and possible re-coupling than the expectation that she remain forever widowed. The widow represented not only the powerful bond created by love and marriage, but also embodied the conventions of grief that ordered the response when those bonds were broken by premature death. This notion of the widow as both a passive memorial to her husband and as an active ‘rememberer’ was rooted in ancient traditions, and appropriated by early Christian and medieval authors who used “good” widowhood to describe the varieties of female celibacy and to define the social and gender order. A tradition of widowhood characterized by chastity, solitude, and permanent bereavement affirmed both the sexual mores and political agenda of the medieval Church. Medieval widows—both holy women recognized as saints and ‘ordinary women’ in medieval daily life—recognized this tradition of professed chastity in widowhood not only as a valuable strategy for avoiding remarriage and protecting their independence, but as a state with inherent dignity that afforded opportunities for spiritual development in this world and eternal merit in the next.
From head to toe to breast to behind, Charles Hodgson's Carnal Knowledge is a delightfully intoxicating tour of the words we use to describe our bodies. Did you know: -eye is one of the oldest written words in the English language? -callipygian means "having beautiful buttocks"? -gam, a slang word for "leg," comes from the French word jambe? A treat for anyone who gets a kick out of words, Carnal Knowledge is also the perfect gift for anyone interested in the human body and the many (many, many) ways it's been described.
Ruth Stone has always eschewed self-promotion and, in the words of Leslie Fiedler, "has never been a member of any school or clique or gaggle of mutual admirers." But her poems speak so vibrantly for her that she cannot be ignored. In her preface to this volume, Sandra M. Gilbert declares that Stone's "intense attention to the ordinary transforms it into (or reveals it as) the extraordinary. Her passionate verses evoke impassioned responses." At the same time, Gilbert continues, the essays collected here "consistently testify to Stone's radical unworldliness, in particular her insouciant contempt for the ' floor walkers and straw bosses' who sometimes seem to control the poetry ' factory' both inside and outside the university." Wendy Barker and Sandra Gilbert have organized the book into three sections: "Knowing Ruth Stone," "A Life of Art," and "Reading Ruth Stone." In "Knowing Ruth Stone," writers of different generations who have known the poet over the years provide memoirs. Noting Stone's singularity, Fiedler points out that "she resists all labels" and is "one of the few contemporaries whom it is possible to think of simply as a ' poet.' " Sharon Olds defines her vitality ("A Ruth Stone poem feels alive in the hands"), and Jan Freeman praises her aesthetic intensity ("Everything in the life of Ruth Stone is integrated with poetry"). "A Life of Art" sketches the outlines of Stone's career and traces her evolution as a poet. Barker and Norman Friedman, for example, trace her development from the "high spirits and elegant craft" of her first volume-- In an Iridescent Time-- through the "deepening shadows," "poignant wit," and "bittersweet meditations" of her later work. In interviews separated by decades (one in the 1970s and one in the 1990s), Sandra Gilbert and Robert Bradley discuss with Stone her own sense of her aesthetic origins and literary growth. "Reading Ruth Stone" is an examination of Stone's key themes and modes. Diane Wakoski and Diana O' Hehir focus on the tragicomic vision that colors much of her work; Kevin Clark and Elyse Blankley explore the political aspects of her poetry; Roger Gilbert analyzes her "often uncannily astute insights into the ' otherness' of other lives"; Janet Lowery and Kandace Brill Lombart draw on the biographical background of Stone's "grief work"; and Sandra Gilbert studies her caritas, her empathic love that redeems pain.
Cara Danforth, a beautiful young woman with a fiery temper and the tenacity to match, is setting out to save her beloved home, Danforth House, and protect her three siblings from the ruination left in the wake of their father’s death. Piecing together reasons for their current economic state, Cara devises a plan to take back what was rightfully theirs. Arriving home after years in the field, Roland Acworth, the Duke of Fairhaven, pondered his current situation. He was a spy not a guardian. What on earth was he going to do with four small children? It would appear, he would have time to figure it out. For before he could venture to Danforth Estates, Roland’s superiors tasked him with finding the thief responsible for a string of robberies amongst England’s elite.
