Books published by Broadview Press Ltd

An accessible, historically focused new edition of a contentious Canadian classic.

One of the earliest novelistic efforts to articulate an American identity, and more specifically to investigate what that identity might promise for women. This second edition has been updated throughout and includes a greatly expanded selection of historical materials on castaway narratives and the cultural context of colonial America.

Regarded by Bernard Shaw as a master of the theatre, Dion Boucicault was arguably the most important figure in drama in North America and in Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century. He was largely forgotten during the twentieth century--though he continued to influence popular culture (the iconic image of a woman tied to railway tracks as a train rushes towards her, for example, originates in a Boucicault melodrama). In the twenty-first century the gripping nature of his plays is being discovered afresh; when The Octoroon was produced as a BBC Radio play in 2012, director and playwright Mark Ravenhill described Boucicault's dramas as "the precursors to Hollywood cinema." In The Octoroon--the most controversial play of his career--Boucicault addresses the sensitive topic of race and slavery. George Peyton inherits a plantation, and falls in love with an octoroon--a person one-eighth African American, and thus, in 1859 Louisiana, legally a slave. The Octoroon opened in 1859 in New York City, just two years prior to the American Civil War, and created a sensation--as it did in its subsequent British production. This new edition includes a wide range of background contextual materials, an informative introduction, and extensive annotation.

A century ago Tennyson had begun to be dismissed as a poet whose work embodied everything the modern world was looking to leave behind. He still seems to readers to embody the substance of the Victorian era more fully than any other poet--but nowadays that is counted in his favor. Critics continue to find layers of complexity in poems once thought simplistic--while appreciating with fresh ears Tennyson's aural mastery. This new edition includes the two long poems In Memoriam and Maud: A Monodrama in their entirety, all the short poems for which Tennyson remains famous, and a generous selection of his lesser-known poetry, together with a concise introduction to the poet and his work, and substantial headnotes for In Memoriam, Maud, and Idylls of the King. Unlike other editions that provide a selection of Tennyson's work, this one includes both marginal glosses of obscure or archaic words and phrases, and extensive annotations at the bottom of each page. Appendices of visual material are also included.

Upon opening their expensive new book in 1623, buyers of the folio collection of William Shakespeare's plays were promised The Life of Henry the Fift. What they went on to read, however, was not a full "life" in the modern biographical sense. The battle of Agincourt is the play's main event; every scene leads up to or follows directly from the climax of one of England's most one-sided and famous victories. The play's ambiguous portrayal of war has spurred critical debate for centuries, and its performances have reflected shifting political and cultural views. James D. Mardock's Introduction provides an extensive discussion of Henry V's critical and stage histories and explores the play's complex relationship with other history plays (and with history itself). The appendices provide materials on the play's historical background and sources, as well as documents on contemporary warfare. Additional materials, including an annotated text of the 1600 quarto (Q1) edition, are available on the Internet Shakespeare Editions website. A collaboration between Broadview Press and the Internet Shakespeare Editions project at the University of Victoria, the editions developed for this series have been comprehensively annotated and draw on the authoritative texts newly edited for the ISE. This innovative series allows readers to access extensive and reliable online resources linked to the print edition.

This thorough introduction to good reasoning has been refined over more than twenty years.

R.M. Liuzza's Broadview edition of Beowulf was published at almost exactly the same time as Seamus Heaney's; in reviewing the two together in July 2000 for The New York Review of Books, Frank Kermode concluded that both translations were superior to their predecessors, and that it was impossible to choose between the two: "the less celebrated translator can be matched with the famous one," he wrote, and "Liuzza's book is in some respects more useful than Heaney's." Ever since, the Liuzza Beowulf has remained among the top sellers on the Broadview list. With this volume readers will now be able to enjoy a much broader selection of Old English poetry in translations by Liuzza. As the collection demonstrates, the range and diversity of the works that have survived is extraordinary--from heartbreaking sorrow to wide-eyed wonder, from the wisdom of old age to the hot blood of battle, and to the deepest and most poignant loneliness. There is breathless storytelling and ponderous cataloguing; there is fervent religious devotion and playful teasing. The poems translated here are meant to provide a sense of some of this range and diversity; in doing so they also offer significant portions of three of the important manuscripts of Old English poetry--the Vercelli Book, the Junius Manuscript, and the Exeter Book.

Walter of Châtillon's Latin epic on the life of Alexander the Great was a twelfth- and thirteenth-century "best-seller: " scribes produced over two hundred manuscripts. The poem follows Alexander from his first successes in Asia Minor, through his conquest of Persia and India, to his progressive moral degeneration and his poisoning by a disaffected lieutenant. The Alexandreis exemplifies twelfth-century discourses of world domination and the exoticism of the East. But at the same time it calls such dreams of mastery into question, repeatedly undercutting as it does Alexander's claims to heroism and virtue and by extension, similar claims by the great men of Walter's own generation. This extraordinarily layered and subtle poem stands as a high-water mark of the medieval tradition of Latin narrative literature. Along with David Townsend's revised translation, this edition provides a rich selection of historical documents, including other writings by Walter of Châtillon, excerpts from other medieval Latin epics, and contemporary accounts of the foreign and "exotic."

In this, Hannah More's only novel and an early nineteenth-century best-seller, More gives voice to a wealthy twenty-three-year-old bachelor, who styles himself ""Coelebs"" (unmarried), but seeks a wife. Along with a critical introduction, this Broadview edition includes a wide selection of historical documents, from reviews, imitations, and sequels.

Provides a light, informal, and contemporary introduction to the study of philosophy. These entertaining conversations emphasize that philosophical questions are contested and open-ended. The characters in each dialogue advocate different answers to questions on religion, ethics, personal identity, and other topics equitably.

In Samson Agonistes, Milton's last great work, he addresses questions that pressed insistently on the imagination of all who were unhappy with the changes wrought by the Restoration. In addition to Samson Agonistes, this volume includes a selection of Milton's best-known short poems. The biblical material concerning Samson is also included in an appendix.

A witty satire of the sentimental novel, a popular genre in Britain throughout the 1790s and the Regency. This newly annotated edition offers a thorough and perceptive introduction and a wide range of carefully selected contextual materials that further explore the term "sensibility.

"A work of intrinsic merit; competent and philosophically adept. The general public, as well as academics, will enjoy reading this book, and will profit from doing so." -- Robert Carter, Trent University

Neither comedy nor tragedy, The Winter's Tale contains elements of each genre, and defies easy classification. It experiments with different styles and tones, and draws on a wide range of sources and inspirations. Theatrical and cinematic productions have tried to capture the range of interpretations and staging possibilities presented by The Winter's Tale, and the introduction to this edition explores the play's long history in performance and in criticism.

Translates in modern English nine medieval verse romances that contain elements of magic: shapeshifters, powerful fairies, trees that are portals to another world, magical armor, clothing, and animals.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's provocative utopian novel Herland, first published in 1915, tells its story through the observations of three male explorers who discover a land inhabited solely by women; the women reproduce through parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). Initially skeptical, the explorers come to realize that Herland has evolved into an ideal, cooperative, matriarchal society--fertile, peaceful, and clean--by selectively reproducing the women's best attributes. As the explorers study Herland culture, they also rethink their own. This edition reproduces the text originally published in The Forerunner in 1915, including several passages omitted from other editions. Stories, poetry, and nonfiction writing by Gilman on topics such as birth control, capital punishment, and eugenics provide a rich context for the novel. Materials originally published alongside Herland in 1915, many of which have never before been republished, are also included, as is an excerpt from the sequel, With Her in Ourland.

A highly readable history of Western philosophy set out as dialectic between some of the major philosophical luminaries from ancient times to the present day.

The Victorian era witnessed dramatic transformations in print culture, and this new anthology covers the exciting intellectual and social debates of the period. From first-person accounts of the lives of factory workers to Oscar Wilde's aesthetic theory, and from narratives of British travelers in Africa and Asia to Havelock Ellis's theories of "sexual inversion," the surprising diversity of nineteenth-century nonfiction writing is represented. Illustrations from Victorian periodicals provide a vivid sense of the original reading experience. The book's thematic organization emphasizes the social and historical contexts of prose writings, as well as the way in which these writings address each other. In addition to a general critical introduction, the anthology features new thematic introductions by experts in the field.

Susanna Haswell Rowson, a popular and prolific writer, actress, and educator in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, had a truly transatlantic life and career, moving twice from England to America and publishing extensively in both countries. A transatlantic sensibility informs her fictionalized "history" of America, Reuben and Rachel, which traces ten generations of an extended family, beginning with the marriage of Christopher Columbus's son to a native Peruvian princess, moving through the Tudor succession crises and the colonial settlement of New England, and ending with the title characters, who leave England for America, renounce titles of nobility, and consider their children "true-born Americans." In Rowson's representation, the American character derives from fusion and hybridity, the results of intermarriage across racial, religious and national lives.