Books published by Victorian Secrets

Ghost stories have always provided a popular source of entertainment, thrilling readers with tales of remote gothic castles and dark dungeons. In the nineteenth century, authors made the genre even scarier by bringing the uncanny within the sanctity of the middle-class home. Women writers especially saw the ghost story as an empowering form, using it to make subversive arguments about gender, class, sexuality, race, and money. In this electrifying collection, Melissa Edmundson showcases ten authors who led lives that challenged Victorian notions of how women should behave and brought those transgressive ideas into their fiction.This collection includes:THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS Amelia B. EdwardsSINCE I DIED Elizabeth Stuart PhelpsTHE SHADOW IN THE CORNER Mary Elizabeth BraddonTHE GHOST AT THE RATH Rosa MulhollandFROM THE DEAD Edith NesbitIN THE SÉANCE ROOM Lettice GalbraithTHE HOUSE WHICH WAS RENT FREE G. M. RobinsTHE LOST GHOST Mary E. WilkinsTHE STRIDING PLACE Gertrude AthertonTHE PRAYER Violet Hunt

Elizabeth Siddall is best known as the muse and model for many Pre-Raphaelite artists and as the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. However, she was also an artist and a poet. This book publishes all her extant poetry in a single volume for the first time. Serena Trowbridge has undertaken extensive archival research to restore Siddall's better-known poems - often heavily edited in previous publications - to their original form, and to identify and reproduce poems and fragments not previously included in anthologies. Elizabeth Siddall's own voice emerges fully from these pages, supporting her rediscovery as a creative artist in her own right.Each poem is accompanied by notes and analysis, and the detailed introduction, extensive bibliography, and biographical timeline position Siddall in her historical, literary and critical contexts. Appendices include a previously unpublished letter from Siddall and poems by other writers that relate to her life and work. The book is illustrated with portraits of Siddall and examples of her own art.Dr. Serena Trowbridge is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University. Her monograph, Christina Rossetti's Gothic (Bloomsbury), was published in 2013, and other publications include 'Past, present, and future death in the graveyard' in Gothic and Death, ed. Carol Davison (Manchester University Press, 2017), '"Truth to Nature": The Pleasures and Dangers of the Environment in Christina Rossetti's Poetry' in Victorians and the Environment, ed. Lawrence Mazzeno (Ashgate, 2017), Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum (edited with Thomas Knowles), (Pickering & Chatto, 2014) and Pre-Raphaelite Masculinities (edited with Amelia Yeates), (Ashgate, 2014). Serena was editor of the Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society 2005-2017.

"The most thoroughly sensual tale I have read in English for a long time," complained Geraldine Jewsbury in her reader's report on Rhoda Broughton's Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867). Initially serialised in The Dublin University Magazine, the novel had been brought to the attention of the publisher Bentley and Son by its editor, J S Le Fanu, who also happened to be Broughton's uncle. Although Jewsbury convinced Bentley that this novel was unsuitable for "decent people", she succeeded only in delaying its publication, as Broughton instead struck a deal with their rival, Tinsley Brothers. While Broughton ultimately triumphed, she was obliged to make extensive revisions, promising to "expunge it of coarseness and slanginess, & to rewrite those passages which cannot be toned down".Jewsbury's moral squeamishness was not shared by the reading public, who were thrilled by Broughton's vivid depiction of Kate Chester teetering on the brink of an adulterous liaison with the solipsistic and haughty Dare Stamer. Notwithstanding the extensive editorial changes, Broughton's novel remains a pioneering portrayal of female sexuality, or what Jewsbury called "highly coloured & hot blooded passion".Reproducing the text of its first appearance in volume form, this new edition of Not Wisely, but Too Well illuminates the novel's ideological and aesthetic complexity through appendices related to its publication history, revision, and reception. These appendices include a section containing Jewsbury's reader's report and Broughton and Le Fanu's correspondence with the Bentleys, a list of variants between serial and volume formats of the novel, and a selection of contemporary reviews. Together these materials provide a fascinating case study of the coming to print, and reception, of a controversial Victorian text, while also attesting to the challenges Broughton faced in representing female desire in her early fiction.This completely reset critical edition includes:* Introduction by Tamar Heller* Explanatory footnotes* Rhoda Broughton chronology* Select bibliography* Correspondence from the Bentley Archives relating to Not Wisely, but Too Well * Textual variants between the serialised and three-decker versions, including the original ending* Selection of contemporary reviews and responses.