Books published by University of Virginia Press

This novel, published for the first time in English, is one of the most important statements about the Duvalier regime in Haiti, written by a Haitian who played a prominent role in the revolutionary movement that brought down the Lescot regime in January 1946. Depestre's ironic note denying historical origins for the novel does not obscure the scathing caricature of Papa Doc Duvalier and the bloodbath that he visited on his own country, which is called "Zacharyland" after the fictionalized President-for-life Zoocrates Zachary.

"For almost the first time in Mr Battestin's book religion has its full innings in the reinterpretation of eighteenth-century literature. Perhaps his greatest contribution is his recovery of a number of divines and their writings and his employment of them as an intellectual rather than a merely antiquarian resource"" - Paul Fussell,

Boundary work studies examine how boundaries of knowledge are formed, maintained, broken down and reconfigured. This text investigates the claims, activities and institutional structures that define and legitimate interdisciplinary practices.

Examines the emergence of the concepts of "religion"and "religions" on colonial frontiers. The book offers an analysis of the ways in which European travellers, missionaries, settlers, and government agents, as well as indigenous Africans, engaged in the comparison of alternative religious ways of life as one dimension of intercultural contact.

Starting from a critical inquiry into specialised issues in editing, this work unfolds an argument for a general revaluation of the grounds of literary study as a whole. It argues that the theory of text must ground itself in a recovery of the entire productive/reproductive history of the text.

A wonderfully readable personal narrative of the trials and tribulations of an ""unskilled, friendless, almost penniless girl of eighteen, utterly alone in the world"" who arrives in New York City in 1905 to earn her livelihood. The book reveals much about the lives of working women in early twentieth-century urban America.

Chronicles the growth of this historic city over nearly four centuries from its founding in the early 1700s to its recent urban and suburban developments. Virginius Dabney updates his history by examining developments in racial relations, cultural institutions, and downtown architecture that have taken place over the past two decades.

A collection of poems by the Martinician poet Aime Cesaire, who was read as a poet of revolutionary zeal during the Black Power movement of the 1960s. This collection is the first English edition to include "And the Dogs Were Silent" and "i, laminaria". There is a critical introduction.

Winner of the coveted Grand Prix de Litterature d'Afrique Noire, this novel has been seen as a story about the struggles of nation-building in Africa, as a fierce depiction of dictatorships in the Third World, and as a profound meditation on the nature of pwer everywhere.

A reproduction of the original 1873 edition of "The Romance of the Harem" by Anna Leonowens which was the source for the 20th-century book "Anna and the King of Siam", known to many through Rogers and Hammerstein's "The King and I".

This study uses 19th-century urban fiction - in particular the novels of Hugo and Dickens - to define a genre: the novel of urban mysteries. He argues that within these extravagant but fact-obsessed narratives the archaic form of allegory became a means for understanding modern cities.

Incorporating elements of literary criticism, cultural studies, and social history, Pleasures and Pains takes a new look at the complicated dynamics of empire as well as the development of still-prevalent perceptions of drugs as alien invaders responsible for the decay of national character.

Traces the phenomenon of ascribing sentimental meaning to floral imagery from its beginnings in Napoleonic France through its later transformations in England and America. At the heart of the book is a depiction of what the three most important flower books from each of the countries divulge about the period and the respective cultures.

Established in 1836, the Bristol Zoo is the world's oldest surviving zoo outside of a capital city and has frequently been at the vanguard of zoo innovation. In The Wild Within, Andrew Flack uses the experiences of the Bristol Zoo to explore the complex and ever-changing relationship between human and beast, which in many cases has altered radically over time.