Reviews
Recent Editions
This annual bibliography of documentary editions recently published in the fields of American and British history, literature, and culture is generally restricted to scholarly first editions of English-language works.
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ADAMS FAMILY. Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 11: July 1795–February 1797. Edited by Margaret A. Hogan, C. James Taylor, Sara Martin, Neal A. Millikan, Hobson Woodward, Sara B. Sikes, and Gregg L. Lint. Harvard University Press. 2013. 728 pp. $95. ISBN: 9780674072442. Covering the period leading up to John Adams’s inauguration, when the partisan divide widened amid the fiery debate over the Jay Treaty and George Washington’s impending retirement, this volume includes Abigail Adams’s keen, acerbic commentary on national events, John Quincy and Thomas Boylston Adams’s observations of the French Directory, the war in Europe, and struggles within the Batavian government.
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AKRON. The Akron Offering, a Ladies’ Literary Magazine, 1849–1850: A Critical Edition. Edited by Jon Miller. University of Akron Press. 2013. 466 pp. $39.95. ISBN: 9781935603535. This annotated edition reproduces the full run of a short-lived literary periodical written by and for women of Akron, Ohio, then a bustling canal town on the cusp of becoming an industrial powerhouse. While shedding light on the religious, creative, and political interests of educated midwestern women, the volume offers insights into their sometimes contradictory views on such events as the California gold rush and the 1848 uprisings in Europe.
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BACON, FRANCIS. The Oxford Francis Bacon I: Early Writings, 1584–1596. Edited by Alan Stewart and Harriet Knight. Oxford University Press. 2012. 1,136 pp. $299. ISBN: 9780198183136. Comprised in this first volume of a new, critical edition of Bacon’s works are position papers, commentaries on printed works, legal readings and opinions, and discourses of advice, which were usually circulated in manuscript. Although relatively informal and “occasional,” the works illustrate Bacon’s developing philosophy. The edition presents the works in accordance with the principles of modern textual scholarship and with full commentaries and glossaries.
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BERLIN, ISAIAH. Building: Letters, 1960–1975. Edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Poole. Chatto & Windus. 2013. 704 pp. $59.95. ISBN: 9780701185763. The third volume of the English philosopher’s letters, Building covers the period when Berlin helped create Wolfson College, Oxford, and published some of his most important works, including his four essays on liberty—the key texts outlining his thoughts on liberal pluralism. Behind these personal triumphs and his observations on the turmoil of the era is a stream of gossip, commentary, and acerbic humor, proving Berlin one of the most trenchant and entertaining letter writers of the twentieth century.
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BERNSTEIN, LEONARD. The Leonard Bernstein Letters. Edited by Nigel Simeone. Yale University Press. 2013. 480 pp. $38. ISBN: 9780300179095. This is the first volume to present a selection of the composer’s wide-ranging correspondence. It includes many never-published letters to such correspondents as Aaron Copland, Stephen Sondheim, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. These letters reveal his complex sexuality, the breadth of his musical interests, and his tremendous capacity for work.
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BYRD, WILLIAM, II. The Dividing Line Histories of William Byrd II of Westover. Edited by Kevin Joel Berland. University of North Carolina Press. 2013. 592 pp. $59.95. ISBN: 9781469606934. Collating all extant manuscripts, this new edition sheds light on the historical and cultural contexts of Byrd’s composition of his two distinct histories of the surveying expedition on which he served: the first, a private, highly satirical account, and the second, a more polished history intended for the London literary market. Berland identifies for the first time many of the sources Byrd used to enrich his account, raising questions about the reliability and originality of Byrd’s narratives and calling for an appreciation of the hybrid nature of early modern history writing.
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CALIFORNIA. California through Russian Eyes, 1806–1848. Compiled, translated, and edited by James R. Gibson. Arthur H. Clark Company. 2013. 506 pp. $45. ISBN: 9780870624216. Russia established a colony in California that lasted until the Russian-American Company sold it in 1841. Gathered from Russian archives and journals, the documents collected and translated here present detailed accounts from Russian mariners, scientists, and company officials. Throughout the volume, the Russians showed themselves to be acute observers of Alta California and its Hispanic and Native American inhabitants.
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CATHER, WILLA. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. Knopf. 2013. 752 pp. $37.50. ISBN: 9780307959300. The first publication of Cather’s letters (her will forbade their publication), this edition collects 566 letters from throughout her life. From reports of her life as a teenager in Red Cloud to her time as a journalist in Pittsburgh and New York to her rise as one of America’s finest novelists, these letters, mostly to close friends and family and to other literary figures, reveal the confident and elegant voice that has made Cather’s fiction endure.
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CIVIL WAR. A Confederate Englishman: The Civil War Letters of Henry Wemyss Feilden. Edited by W. Eric Emerson and Karen Stokes. University of South Carolina Press. 2013. 216 pp. $29.95. ISBN: 9781611171358. Feilden was a young British officer who resigned his commission, ran the Union blockade, and became a staff officer of P. G. T. Beauregard. During the war, he married South Carolinian Julia McCord. This volume publishes for the first time his letters to her, which offer a compelling view into the operations of the military headquarters in Charleston and subsequently in operations in Georgia and Florida. Feilden and his wife moved to Great Britain after the war, and he resumed his military career there. This volume prints also a selection of letters from the early twentieth century in which Feilden reflects on his career, which included explorations of the Arctic.
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CIVIL WAR. Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War: Annotated Edition. By Judith Brokenbrough McGuire. Edited by James I. Robertson Jr. University of Kentucky Press. 2013. 352 pp. $60. ISBN: 9780813144375. Throughout the war, McGuire wrote incisive commentaries on society, detailed her hardships, and balanced reflections on her life behind the battle lines with military reports and rumors. Her oft-cited journals here receive for the first time meticulous annotations that furnish references for poems and quotations and identify the many individuals who previously have only been known by the initials McGuire gave them.
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CIVIL WAR. Torn by War: The Civil War Journal of Mary Adelia Byers. Edited by Samuel R. Phillips. University of Oklahoma Press. 2013. 248 pp. $19.95. ISBN: 9780806143958. Byers began recording her thoughts and observations at the age of fifteen in 1862, during the first of three Union occupations of Batesville, Arkansas. An acute observer, Byers illustrated the conflicts experienced by a social elite very much dependent upon slavery but situated on the fringes of the Confederacy. The volume adds to the growing body of literature on civilian life during the Civil War.
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COAL INDUSTRY. Letters of John Buddle to Lord Londonderry, 1820–1843. Edited by Anne Orde. Boydell & Brewer. 2013. 450 pp. $90. ISBN: 978085440726. Buddle was the most eminent mining engineer of his era and served as colliery manager for Charles Stewart, third Marquess of Londonderry, who owned mines in northeast England. Selected from the more than two thousand letters that Buddle wrote to his employer, this edition offers detailed accounts of the coal trade at a time when the industry was expanding rapidly and provides a window into the politics, economy, and social situation of the northeast.
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COLONIAL MASSACHUSETTS. The Papers of Francis Bernard, Volume 3: Governor of Colonial Massachusetts, 1760–1769. Edited by Colin Nicolson. University of Virginia Press. 2013. 488 pp. $49.50. ISBN: 9780985254315. Royal governor during the tumultuous decade that saw Massachusetts set the pattern for American reactions to the Stamp Act and other British measures, Bernard provided firsthand observations on the birth of the American movement for independence. This third volume of a four-volume set that will advance scholarship on late eighteenth-century British imperial historiography covers the years 1766 and 1767.
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CONSTITUTION, UNITED STATES. Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 26. Ratification of the Constitution by the States: Rhode Island, No. 3. Edited by John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, Jonathan M. Reid, Charles H. Schoenleber, Richard Leffler, and Margaret R. Flamingo. Wisconsin Historical Society Press. 2013. 1205 pp. $95. ISBN: 9780870206214. The last of three volumes documenting public and private debates concerning the new US Constitution in Rhode Island.
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DALL, CAROLINE HEALEY. Selected Journals of Caroline Healey Dall. Edited by Helen R. Deese. University of Virginia Press. 2013. 752 pp. $75. ISBN: 9781936520053. The second volume of Dall’s diary extends her story into the crucial period of her role in the American women’s movement and in the founding of the American Social Science Association. A strongly partisan New Englander, Dall is revealed also as a single mother working to form a new identity as a writer, lecturer, and reformer.
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DICKENS, CHARLES. Dickens’s Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836. Edited by Robert C. Hanna. AMS Press. 2012. 372 pp. $147.50. ISBN: 9780404123456. This collection reproduces fifty-six early sketches exactly as they were initially published before Dickens heavily revised them for his first book, Sketches of Boz. Authoritative annotations, four rarely seen original illustrations, and authorized and unauthorized versions of the sketches allow readers to encounter Dickens as his first readers did.
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ELIOT, T. S. The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 4: 1928–29. Edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden. Yale University Press. 2013. 880 pp. $50. ISBN: 9780300187243. During the period covered in this volume, Eliot sought secure financial support for his periodical, the Monthly Criterion, while tending to his wife, Vivien, who had just returned from a French psychiatric hospital. Corresponding as always with writers from around the world, he concluded a number of writings himself, including the poem A Song for Simeon and an introduction to Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone.
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EMANCIPATION. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. Series 3, Volume 2: Land and Labor, 1866–1867. Edited by René Hayden, Anthony E. Kaye, Kate Masur, Steven F. Miller, Susan E. O’Donovan, Leslie S. Rowland, and Stephen A. West. University of North Carolina Press. 2013. 1,096 pp. $99.95. ISBN: 9781469607429. Using documents selected from the National Archives, many of them in the freedpeople’s own words, this volume examines the remaking of the South’s labor system in the aftermath of emancipation. It captures the efforts of freedpeople to establish their families as independent economic units, the reordering of labor, migration, and new relations of credit and debt.
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EXPLORATION. The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captaine Thomas James: A Critical Edition. Edited by Colleen M. Franklin. McGill-Queens University Press. 2013. 360 pp. $100. ISBN: 9780773541924. A British explorer, James published in 1633 an account of his attempt to find the Northwest Passage and the winter he spent on an island in James Bay. For two centuries, his narrative remained the British public’s primary source of information for northern Canada. This new edition offers a history of the text’s reception from its first publication into the nineteenth century.
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FETHERLING, GEORGE. The Writing Life: Journals, 1975–2005. Edited by Brian Busby. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2013. 360 pp. $37.95. ISBN: 9780773541146. Selected from thousands of pages of the journals of one of Canada’s leading literary figures, The Writing Life reveals Fetherling to be an astute observer of his contemporaries as well as of himself. Figures such as Margaret Atwood and Marshall McLuhan fill the journals, which begin in mid-1970s Toronto before moving to Vancouver and extending into a new century.
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FUR TRADE. This Far-Off Land: The Upper Missouri Letters of Andrew Dawson. Edited by Lesley Wischmann and Andrew Erskine Dawson. Arthur H. Clark Company. 2013. 336 pp. $39.95. ISBN: 9780870624193. Dawson was a young Scot who immigrated to St. Louis in 1844 and three years later joined the fur trade along the upper Missouri River in what is now North Dakota and Montana, where he would assume command of several trading outposts and become known as the last “King of the Upper Missouri.” This volume pairs a biography of Dawson with thirty-seven previously unpublished letters that he sent from the frontier. The letters capture the sense of isolation that characterized the fur trade and descriptions of some of the least documented fur trading centers.
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GAYLE, SARAH HAYNSWORTH. The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827–1835: A Substitute for Social Intercourse. Edited by Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins and Ruth Smith Truss. University of Alabama Press. 2013. 392 pp. $39.95. ISBN: 9780817313333. Long an invaluable source for historians of elite southern women in the antebellum South, Gayle’s journal has been frequently misinterpreted because of the ragged condition of the original and the poor quality of the many transcriptions that have circulated. Using archival techniques, the editors have recovered obscured information and created the most reliable reading of Gayle’s journal. Textual notes explain how damaged lines were restored.
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GOMPERS, SAMUEL. The Samuel Gompers Papers, Volume 13: Cumulative Index. Edited by Peter J. Albert and Grace Palladino. University of Illinois Press. 2013. 320 pp. $50. ISBN: 9780252037429. The final volume in this landmark documentary edition, the index provides a key to the previous volumes, permitting scholars to recognize the emphases in subject matter and locate the substantive annotations of key individuals, unions, legislation, and events.
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HAITIAN REVOLUTION. An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti. By Marcus Rainford. Edited by Paul Youngquist and Grégory Pierrot. Duke University Press. 2013. 392 pp. $99.95. ISBN: 9780822352785. The first complete narrative in English of the Haitian Revolution, Rainsford’s account was highly influential in establishing world opinion of the pivotal events. Rainsford was a British officer who went to Haiti to recruit black soldiers. His account supported the idea of Haitian independence, praised the prowess of black troops, and recounted his meetings with Toussaint Louverture and other Haitian leaders. The first edition since the initial publication of 1805, this volume provides contextual and historical details and includes a newly discovered miniature painting of Louverture by Rainsford.
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HAND, LEARNED. Reason and Imagination: The Selected Correspondence of Learned Hand. Edited by Constance Jordan. Oxford University Press. 2013. 480 pp. $39.95. ISBN: 9780199899104. This edition offers a unique sampling of the correspondence between Hand and an array of intellectual and legal giants, including Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Theodore Roosevelt, Walter Lippmann, Felix Frankfurter, and Bernard Berenson. The letters, many never before published, cover almost half a century and showcase decades of original thought on American jurisprudence.
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HARDY, THOMAS. The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, Volume 8: Further Letters. Edited by Michael Millgate and Keith Wilson. Oxford University Press. 2013. 320 pp. $160. ISBN: 9780199607754. The long-awaited supplement to Hardy’s Collected Letters, this volume contains previously unpublished letters from all periods of Hardy’s career, including his earliest known letter. It introduces important new correspondents and sheds light on existing exchanges.
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HERRICK, ROBERT. The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume 1. Edited by Tom T. Cain and Ruth Connolly. Oxford University Press. 2013. 400 pp. $135. ISBN: 9780199212842. This volume concentrates on Herrick’s large printed collection Hesperides, the product of four decades of writing. Based on a collation of all fifty-seven known surviving copies, the edition includes a new biography. A second volume will contain extensive commentary, so that readers can read it side by side with the poems.
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HOGG, JAMES. Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine: Volume 2, 1829–1835. Edited by Thomas Richardson. Edinburgh University Press. 2012. 432 pp. $95. ISBN: 9780748624898. From 1817 to his death in 1835, James Hogg published 115 works in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, which showcased the diversity of his talent. Poems and songs, sketches of rural life, review essays, short stories, and satirical pieces enlivened the journal’s pages. This edition includes previously unpublished submitted work from the same period and full explanatory and textual notes.
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HOGG FAMILY. The Hoggs of Texas: Letters and Memoirs of an Extraordinary Family, 1887–1906. Edited by Virginia Bernhard. Texas A&M University Press. 2013. 350 pp. $35. ISBN: 9781625110015. Featuring more than four hundred previously unpublished letters, this volume follows the family of Gov. James Stephen Hogg through the state’s late nineteenth-century politics and their own ups and downs. Interspersed are portions of Ima Hogg’s memoir and commentary from the editor.
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HOPKINS, GERARD MANLEY. The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Correspondence, Volume 1: 1852–1881. Volume 2: 1882–1889. Edited by R. K. R. Thornton and Catherine Phillips. Oxford University Press. 2013. 504 pp. $299. ISBN: 9780199653706. Set out on radically different lines from previous editions of the poet’s letters, these two comprehensive volumes of the Collected Works provide, as far as is possible, a narrative sequence. New transcriptions revise a large number of readings and include all legible emendations, allowing the reader to follow the hesitancies and adjustments of Hopkins’s mind. The letters provide a window into Hopkins’s thoughts on his own work and on poetry in general.
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HUGHES, LANGSTON. My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926–1938. Edited by Carmaletta M. Williams and John Edgar Tidwell. University of Georgia Press. 2013. 240 pp. $39.95. ISBN: 9780820345659. Using family systems theory, the editors introduce readers to a previously unexplored aspect of Hughes’s work. The letters from Hughes’s mother reveal the difficult negotiations between family and art that Hughes engaged in as he attempted to sustain an elusive but enduring artistic reputation. His responses to his mother’s correspondence came in his artistic work, making the letters a new resource for engaging the inner self that has eluded Hughes scholars.
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ISHERWOOD, CHRISTOPHER. Liberation: Diaries, 1970–1983. Edited by Katherine Bucknell. Chatto & Windus. 2012. 875 pp. $39.99. ISBN: 9780701169404. This edition records Isherwood’s immersion in the 1970s arts scenes of Los Angeles, New York, and London, when he came into contact with such figures as John Huston, David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. Frank and humorous reflections on the dramatic events of the era and his own role in the gay liberation movement are balanced with candid revelations of his fear of death.
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JACKSON, ANDREW. The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume 9: 1831. Edited by Daniel Feller, Laura Eve Moss, Thomas Coens, and Erik B. Alexander. University of Tennessee Press. 2013. 987 pp. $92. ISBN: 9871621900045. Presenting more than five hundred documents, many newly discovered, this edition covers the third year of Jackson’s presidency, when he cleared his contentious cabinet and pursued his feud with Vice President John C. Calhoun, whom he blamed for his political troubles. Through all this turmoil, Jackson continued to press his priorities: Indian removal, retirement of the national debt, and opposition to the Bank of the United States and to nullification.
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JAY, JOHN. The Selected Papers of John Jay, Volume 3: 1782–1784. Edited by Elizabeth M. Nuxoll. University of Virginia Press. 2013. 768 pp. $95. ISBN: 9780813932804. This volume opens with Jay’s arrival in Paris for the negotiation of the peace treaty with Great Britain and explores his insistence on a British recognition of American independence as a precondition for negotiation and his disregard of congressional instructions to take no action without the consent of France. Also covered are topics such as the Jays’ social and domestic life, Jay’s efforts to settle a family inheritance, and his return to America, where he accepted the post of secretary of foreign affairs.
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JEFFERSON, THOMAS. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 39: 13 November 1802–3 March 1803. Edited by Barbara B. Oberg, James P. McClure, Elaine Weber Pascu, Martha J. King, Tom Downey, and W. Bland Whitley. Princeton University Press. 2012. 768 pp. $115. ISBN: 9780691156712. This volume contains documents connected to the closing of the right of deposit in New Orleans, an act that threatened the well-being of westerners and encouraged Jefferson to send his friend and ally James Monroe to Paris to negotiate a permanent solution. Also included are Jefferson’s request for funds for a western expedition to be led by Meriwether Lewis and a visit to Washington from his daughters and two grandchildren.
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JEFFERSON, THOMAS. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 9: 1 September 1815–30 April 1816. Edited by J. Jefferson Looney, Robert F. Haggard, Julie L. Lautenschlager, Ellen C. Hickman, and Christine Sternberg Patrick. Princeton University Press. 2012. 848 pp. $115. ISBN: 9780691156705. During the period covered in this volume, Jefferson made three trips to Poplar Forest, where he also hosted the returning war hero Andrew Jackson. Jefferson repurposed a letter in which he indulged in a “tirade” against the pamphlet of a New England clergyman by having it published anonymously in the Richmond Enquirer, and also responded anonymously to an interpretation of the Constitution published in a Washington newspaper.
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MADISON, JAMES. The Papers of James Madison, Retirement Series, Volume 2: 1 February 1820–26 February 1823. Edited by David B. Mattern, J. C. A. Stagg, Mary Parke Johnson, and Anne Mandeville Colony. University of Virginia Press. 2013. 768 pp. $85. ISBN: 9780813933764. During the time covered in this volume, Madison remained at his home, Montpelier, other than visits to neighborhood friends and attendance at Board of Visitor meetings at the University of Virginia. He corresponded with President James Monroe about domestic and international politics, with Thomas Jefferson about the building of the University of Virginia, and with a wide range of other individuals who received Madison’s views on slavery and public education.
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MILTON, JOHN. The Complete Works of John Milton, Volume 8: De Doctrina Christiana. Edited by John K. Hale, Donald Cullington, Gordon Campbell, and Thomas N. Corns. Oxford University Press. 2013. 1,440 pp. $375. ISBN: 9780199234516. This volume presents Milton’s systematic theology, his longest work, in which he worked out his beliefs directly from scripture. This definitive edition is based on a fresh transcription and includes fuller textual apparatus and commentary. Of particular note is the edition’s close attention to the nuances of Milton’s Latin.
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MONTGOMERY, L. M. The Complete Journals of L. M. Montgomery: The Pei Years, 1901–1911. Edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston. Oxford University Press. 2013. 444 pp. $42. ISBN: 9780199002115. The second of the complete journals to appear, this volume covers Montgomery’s early adult years, including her work as a newspaper editor in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the death of her grandmother, and her impending marriage to a clergyman. It documents her own reflections on writing, her mood swings, and her changing relationship with the world of Prince Edward Island. This edition recreates the format that Montgomery devised for her journals.
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NEHRU, JAWAHARLAL. Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Volume 46: 1 January–28 February 1959. Edited by Madhavan K. Palat. Oxford University Press. 2013. 738 pp. $60. ISBN: 9780198090489. With extensive annotations, this volume provides a panorama of home and the world as seen from the center of power in India by a sensitive observer and a skillful statesman.
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NEILSON, ELIZA LUCY IRION. A New Southern Woman: The Correspondence of Eliza Lucy Irion Neilson, 1871–1883. Edited by Giselle Roberts. University of South Carolina Press. 2013. 352 pp. $49.95. ISBN: 9781611171307. Neilson composed and preserved over 130 letters during the period covered in this volume, which prints eighty letters documenting family and domestic life in Columbus, Mississippi. Creating an agricultural partnership with her husband under the straitened circumstances of the postbellum South, Neilson also observed the efforts of one widowed sister, another sister who was single, and a school-age niece. Her correspondence suggests the ways that elite white women created a new southern consciousness under a broader rubric of genteel postbellum femininity.
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NIN, ANAÏS. Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939–1947. Edited by Paul Herron. Swallow Press. 2013. 440 pp. $34.95. ISBN: 9780804011464. Collecting for the first time the portion of Nin’s diary that was cut from previous published editions, Mirages covers a difficult period of Nin’s life after she fled Paris and experienced a kind of delirium that fueled her search for erotic fulfillment. The diary offers answers to questions concerning the end of Nin’s affair with Henry Miller, her troubled marriage, and her penchant for collecting devoted younger men.
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OLMSTED, FREDERICK LAW. The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Volume 8: The Early Boston Years, 1882–1890. Edited by Charles E. Beveridge, Ethan Carr, Amanda Gagel, and Michael Shapiro. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2013. 928 pp. $110. ISBN: 9781421409269. Relocating to Boston, where he established a modern landscape architecture practice with his stepson, Olmsted during the 1880s designed the ambitious park system of Boston and Brookline, public parks in New York State and Detroit, and the grounds of the Biltmore Estate near Asheville. He wrote frequently on the subject of landscape design, and this volume contains some of his most mature and powerful statements on his art.
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OSAGES. An Osage Journey to Europe, 1827–1830: Three French Accounts. Edited and translated by William Least Heat-Moon and James K. Wallace. University of Oklahoma Press. 2013. 168 pp. $29.95. ISBN: 9780806144030. In 1827 six Osages, two of them women, traveled to Europe, where they made a celebrated visit to France. Virtually lost since the 1830s, the three accounts of the visit published in this volume reflect European stereotypes of American Indians but nonetheless provide unique insights into Osage life and are surprisingly accurate in some of their depictions of Osage history, geography, and lifeways.
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PIERCE, WILLIAM. William Pierce: On the Constitutional Convention and the Constitution. Notes from the Convention, Sketches of Delegates, and Writings on the Constitution. Edited by Richard Leffler, John P. Kaminski, and Samuel K. Fore. Harlan Crow Library. 2012. 119 pp. Based on Pierce’s manuscript observations of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, this handsome edition includes helpful annotations, brief biographies of all the convention members described by Pierce, and excerpts of letters Pierce wrote during the drafting and ratification of the Constitution.
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POLK, JAMES K. Correspondence of James K. Polk, Volume 12: January–July 1847. Edited by Tom Chaffin and Michael David Cohen. University of Tennessee Press. 2013. 567 pp. $75. ISBN: 9781572339527. The letters in this volume, most of them previously unpublished, document Polk’s prosecution of the war against Mexico, which along with his previous settlement of the Oregon controversy, increased the size of the United States by a third. During the period covered, Polk and other Americans celebrated victories at Buena Vista, Sacramento, and Veracruz, among others. The war did not eliminate, however, other foreign policy concerns also covered in the volume. Polk’s party-building efforts also emerge as a critical element of his presidency. Among personal issues exposed are Polk’s management of his Mississippi plantation and the slave trading it entailed and his interactions with family members.
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PORTRAITURE. A Memoir of James De Veaux, of Charleston, S.C., a Member of the National Academy of Design, New York. Edited by Robert W. Gibbes, with introduction and notes by Alexander Moore. University of South Carolina Press. 2013. 344 pp. $16.95. ISBN: 9781611170986. A promising young artist who worked up and down the East Coast and throughout his native South Carolina, De Veaux became the subject of a biography by Gibbes, who also printed some of the artist’s diaries and letters. The Memoir recounts De Veaux’s experiences in the art world of Europe and offers insight into the artistic culture of antebellum South Carolina. This edition includes textual notes and adds biographical and art historical information.
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RELIGIOUS REVIVALS. The McCulloch “Examinations” of the Cambuslang Revival (1742): A Critical Edition. Edited by Keith Edward Beebe. Boydell & Brewer. 2013. Volume 1: 461 pp. $70. ISBN: 9780906245323. Volume 2: 355 pp. $70. ISBN: 9780906245330. Consisting of more than one hundred conversion narratives from the Cambuslang revival of 1742 in Scotland, the McCulloch Examinations amounted to Scotland’s first large-scale oral history project. Now published in their entirety for the first time, these narratives shed light on a vital chapter of transatlantic religious history. The edition includes the proposed redactions and marginal comments of four prominent clergymen who assisted McCulloch with the project.
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ROLLE, RICHARD. Two Revised Versions of Rolle’s English Psalter Commentary and the Related Canticles. Edited by Anne Hudson. Oxford University Press. 2013. 984 pp. $125. ISBN: 9780199674299. Rolle, a fourteenth-century scholar, wrote two commentaries on the Psalms, one in English and one in Latin. Some fifty years after his death, his English commentary was revised by a series of Lollard writers. Presented here is a full edition of the first Lollard revision, based on a full study of all manuscripts of both versions. It also includes twelve canticles that accompanied the commentary.
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SIMMS, WILLIAM GILMORE. William Gilmore Simms’s Selected Reviews on Literature and Civilization. Edited by James Everett Kibler Jr. and David Moltke-Hansen. University of South Carolina Press. 2013. 400 pp. $44.95. ISBN: 9781611172959. Simms, in addition to his own creative work, was one of the United States’ most significant literary critics. This volume collects sixty-two examples of his newspaper and periodical reviews as well as four critical essays. A proponent of romanticism, Simms read widely, reviewing French and German works, recent editions of Greek and Latin classics, and such American writers as Melville and Thoreau. The editors situate Simms within the wider intellectual milieu that undergirded the romantic movement.
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SLAVE NARRATIVES. Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave. Edited by Hank Trent. Louisiana State University Press. 2013. Published in 1838 to great fanfare, James Williams’s narrative was eventually disowned by its publisher, the American Anti-Slavery Society, after defenders of slavery challenged its authenticity. Most historians have treated it as a fraud. The editor provides new biographical information that confirms the identity of the author as a man enslaved in Virginia and Alabama who altered his life story to throw investigators off the track. This edition draws upon court cases, advertisements, census records, and estate inventories never before linked to the real-life Williams.
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SMITH, JOSEPH. The Joseph Smith Papers. Documents, Volume 1: July 1828–June 1831. Edited by Michael Hubbard MacKay, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William J. Hartley. Church Historian’s Press. 2013. 558 pp. $54.95. ISBN: 9781609075774. Inaugurating the core series of the Papers, this volume includes the first three years of what survives of Smith’s papers. It includes letters he sent and received, revelations, minutes of meetings he participated in, ecclesiastical records, and financial papers. Subjects covered include the translation and publication of the Book of Mormon, the establishment of the church, and a mission to Indians in the West, led by Oliver Cowdery.
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SMITH, JOSEPH. The Joseph Smith Papers. Documents, Volume 2: July 1831–January 1833. Edited by Matthew C. Godfrey, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley. Church Historian’s Press. 2013. 550 pp. $54.95. ISBN: 9781609075989. Covered in this volume are administrative and doctrinal developments in the church, including the organization of the United Firm and the establishment of the city of Zion in Missouri. Two letters from Smith to his wife Emma offer insights into Smith’s family life.
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SWIFT, JONATHAN. Parodies, Hoaxes, Mock Treatises: Polite Conversation, Directions to Servants, and Other Works. Edited by Valerie Rumbold. Cambridge University Press. 2013. 821 pp. $130. ISBN: 9780521843263. Among his most fascinating works, Swift’s parodies perhaps require the most explication for modern readers. The editor includes discussions of the political and print contexts of Swift’s Bickerstaff Papers. Each work is supplemented with a headnote and significant annotation, as well as a textual account that presents and discusses changes in the texts over time.
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TEJANOS. Recollections of a Tejano Life: Antonio Menchaca in Texas History. Edited by Timothy Matovina, Jesús F. de la Teja, and Justin Poché. University of Texas Press. 2013. 202 pp. $55. ISBN: 9780292748651. A native of San Antonio, the prominent military veteran and merchant José Antonio Menchaca was one of only a few Tejano leaders to leave behind a document of recollections. Reconstructed in its entirety for the first time, this annotated edition captures the social life, people, and events that shaped Texas’s history during its transition from Mexican hinterland to independent nation to an American, and eventually Confederate, state.
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TEXAS RANGERS. “Pidge,” Texas Ranger. Edited by Chuck Parsons. Texas A&M University Press. 2013. 224 pp. $29.95. ISBN: 9781603449748. Thomas C. “Pidge” Robinson moved from Virginia to Texas, joining the Rangers in 1874. A learned and witty writer, Robinson sent back letters, poems, and reports to Austin newspapers. Compiled from these submissions, this annotated compendium offers insights into the life and actions of the Rangers as well as the popular culture of postbellum Texas.
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TUCKER, ST. GEORGE. St. George Tucker’s Law Reports and Selected Papers, 1782–1825. Edited by Charles F. Hobson. University of North Carolina Press. 2013. 3 vols. 2,128 pp. $250. ISBN: 9780807837214. A comprehensive set of the Virginia jurist’s law reports and selected loose papers, this is an unsurpassed archive for examining the adaptation of the common law during the period of the early republic. Tucker’s reports fill a documentary gap caused by the 1865 fire that destroyed Virginia’s higher court records. The edition includes a biographical register and correspondence related to the rupture between Tucker and Spencer Roane.
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TWAIN, MARK. Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition. Edited by Benjamin Griffin, Harriet E. Smith, Victor Fischer, Michael Barry Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, and Leslie Diane Myrick. University of California Press. 2013. 776 pp. $45. ISBN: 9780520272781. This volume delves deeper into Twain’s life, uncovering the many roles he played. Filled with his characteristic blend of humor and ire, the narrative exposes his views on writing and speaking, his concerns with money, and his observations on politics and politicians of the day.
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VIRGINIA. The History and Present State of Virginia. By Robert Beverley. Edited by Susan Scott Parrish. University of North Carolina Press. 2013. 416 pp. $45. ISBN: 9781469607948. A Virginia native, Robert Beverley published his account of the colony while visiting London in 1705. The History provided English readers with information on Virginia’s political economy, past, natural history, and Indians. Based on a fresh transcription of the 1705 edition, this volume presents a comprehensive comparison of emendations in the 1722 edition and situates its author in the context of the political and cultural issues of his day.
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WALLACE, ALFRED RUSSEL. On the Organic Law of Change: A Facsimile Edition and Annotated Transcription of Alfred Russel Wallace’s Species Notebook of 1855–1859. Edited by James T. Costa. Harvard University Press. 2013. 640 pp. $49.95. ISBN: 9780674724884. To mark the centennial of the famous naturalist’s death, this edition presents a facsimile, transcription, and annotation of Wallace’s “Species Notebook,” which he kept during an expedition to Malaysia, Indonesia, and New Guinea. The notebooks sketch out Wallace’s evolutionary theory, which, like Darwin’s, was premised on the notion of natural selection. The edition asserts Wallace’s stature as a founder of biogeography and pioneer of the theory of evolution.
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WARREN, ROBERT PENN. Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren, Volume 6: Toward Sunset, at a Great Height, 1980–1989. Edited by Randy Hendricks and James A. Perkins. Louisiana State University Press. 2013. 480 pp. $90. ISBN: 9780807152829. The sixth and final volume of this selected edition, Toward Sunset documents the final decade of Warren’s life, when he published three volumes of poetry, a work of nonfiction prose, and a memoir. In his last years he became frustrated with the poetry he was able to write but continued to be a lively correspondent, filling his letters with details of his home life and that of his children. To the end he maintained a stoic attitude regarding his physical decline and continued to encourage younger poets he admired.
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WASHINGTON, GEORGE. The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, Volume 17: 1 October 1794–31 March 1795. Edited by David R. Hoth and Carol S. Ebel. University of Virginia Press. 2013. 800 pp. $85. ISBN: 9780813934167. Highlighted by documents connected to the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion and the negotiation of the Jay Treaty, this volume begins with Washington in the field, before his determination that quelling the insurrection in western Pennsylvania no longer required his presence. Letters from Alexander Hamilton kept him apprised of the situation, and subsequently he entertained requests for pardons for participants in the rebellion. Other issues covered include Indian affairs in the wake of the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the departure of Thomas Pinckney to revive stalled negotiations with Spain.
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WASHINGTON, GEORGE. The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, Volume 22: 1 August–21 October 1779. Edited by Benjamin L. Huggins. University of Virginia Press. 2013. 904 pp. $85. ISBN: 9780813933665. During this period, Washington worked to strengthen the fortifications at West Point and planned the successful attack on Paulus Hook, New Jersey. He also supervised logistical support for the American expedition against the Six Nations and intensified defensive preparations for the expected reinforcement of British troops in the Hudson area.
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WASHINGTON TERRITORY. Selected Letters of A. M. A. Blanchet, Bishop of Walla Walla and Nesqualy, 1847–1879. Edited by Roberta Stringham Brown and Patricia O’Connell Killen. Translated by Roberta Stringham Brown. University of Washington Press. 2013. 288 pp. $40. ISBN: 9780295992631. Named the first bishop of Walla Walla in 1846, A. M. A. Blanchet spent thirty-two years in the Pacific Northwest, a time of rapid change for the region. The editors have chosen forty-five of the almost nine hundred letters Blanchet sent to his colleagues and superiors in Montreal, Paris, and Rome, other missionaries, and US government officials. The letters provide firsthand glimpses of signal events in the region’s history as well as observations on ordinary settlers, native populations, and the struggle to build educational and social organizations.
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WILDE, OSCAR. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Volume 5: Plays I. Edited by Joseph Donohue. Oxford University Press. 2013. 848 pp. $250. ISBN: 9780198119579. The first volume of a critical edition of Wilde’s plays, it presents The Duchess of Padua, Salome: Drame en un Acte, and Salome: Tragedy in One Act. Encompassing all surviving manuscript material and other documents, the edition contains comprehensive introductions to the plays and extensive annotations.
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WILDE, OSCAR. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Volume 6: Journalism I. Edited by John Stokes and Mark Turner. Oxford University Press. 2013. 1,064 pp. ISBN: 9780198119647. Volume 7: Journalism II. 532 pp. ISBN: 9780198119630. $250. These two volumes print all of Wilde’s known contributions, both signed and anonymous, to periodicals and newspapers. Reviews, articles, and editorials showcase Wilde’s extraordinary cultural knowledge and his witty, intellectually acute style. The volumes provide an essential record of the vibrant and rapidly changing journalistic culture in which Wilde played a part.
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WOODWARD, C. VANN. The Letters of C. Vann Woodward. Edited by Michael O’Brien. Yale University Press. 2013. 480 pp. $40. ISBN: 9780300185348. One of the most important American historians of the twentieth century, Woodward left behind a body of wry and often funny letters. Correspondents include Richard Hofstadter, John Kennedy, David Riesman, and Robert Penn Warren. Woodward’s letters shed light on what it meant to be an American radical and public intellectual.