Published March 2023
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Le Vieillard et ses trois filles and Timon d’Athènes: Two Shakespeare Adaptations
Edited by Joseph Harris
Critical Texts 82
- ‘Mercier was a highly experienced playwright, and his adaptations offer readers a chance both to see Shakespeare through Mercier’s eyes and to appreciate Mercier’s own understanding of national culture, dramatic heroes, stagecraft, and the French Revolution. It is all the easier for readers to do this in Harris’s edition, which includes a wealth of helpful footnotes and a well-judged introduction that touches upon many important points without overwhelming the reader.’ — James Harriman-Smith, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 46.3, 2023, 311-97 (full text online)
- ‘In the Introduction, Harris locates the two plays within the author’s career, and associates them with the cultural, literary, and political issues of late eighteenth-century France. The Notes register in detail the numerous parallels as well as the differences between Shakespeare’s and Mercier’s plays, thus inviting and generously anticipating the comparative study of both... It is to be hoped that with this new edition of a moving and politically interesting play, Mercier’s Timon d’Athènes, hitherto largely ignored, will re-enter the collective memory of French and English readers.’ — Ina Schabert, Translation and Literature 32, 2023, 379-83 (full text online)
Published December 2022
Alexis Piron, Le Claperman and L’Âne d’or
Edited by Derek Connon
Critical Texts 84
Published November 2022
Decadent Writings of Aubrey Beardsley
Edited by Sasha Dovzhyk and Simon Wilson
Critical Texts 78 / Jewelled Tortoise 10
- ‘Sections of [Under the Hill] appeared, heavily edited, in The Savoy during Beardsley’s life, and it has been reissued several times since in varying degrees of expurgation. But it has never received the lavish scholarly attention that Sasha Dovzhyk and Simon Wilson bestow in Decadent Writings of Aubrey Beardsley.’ — Colton Valentine, New Yorker 13 February 2023
- ‘Sasha Dovzhyk and Simon Wilson’s edition... offers a thorough and judicious introduction to a figure whose influence as an artist is uncontested while making a compelling case for reconsidering Beardsley’s significance as a writer... Their scrupulously scholarly edition strikes a deft balance between providing a rich resource for Beardsley scholars and making Under the Hill accessible to general readers. They provide able guidance to Beardsley’s densely allusive world, painstakingly tracking down and teasing apart the thicket of references threaded throughout Beardsley’s prose... One of the pleasures of the edition is the clear personal investments of the editors; this is clearly a labour of love and their admiration for their subject is – in a metaphor Beardsley himself would relish – contagious.’ — Nicole Fluhr, The Wildean 64, 2024, 206-09
Published September 2022
La Découverte de l’île Frivole by Gabriel-François Coyer
A Bilingual Edition by Jean-Alexandre Perras
Critical Texts 76
Published July 2022
Michael Field, For That Moment Only and Other Prose Works
Edited by Alex Murray and Sarah Parker
Critical Texts 72 / Jewelled Tortoise 8
- ‘Alex Murray’s and Sarah Parker’s edition of Michael Field’s short prose, For That Moment Only, considers the small-scale, gem-like pieces that were either lifted from the diary or specifically composed for publication. These range from essays or even sermons to sketches, impressions, vignettes, croquis, short stories and pieces of memorably poetic prose. In their excellent and detailed introduction, the editors describe croquis or prose poems as “the fragmented and fleeting poetic forms we associate with modernism”, though this notional “modernity of form” goes back not only to the 1860s, with Baudelaire’s Petits Poèmes en prose and Pater’s early essays, but also to Novalis and Schlegel as well as Coleridge.’ — Angela Leighton, Times Literary Supplement 17 February 2023
Published November 2021
The Pen and the Needle: Rousseau & the Enlightenment Debate on Women’s Education
Edited by Joanna M. Barker
Critical Texts 80
Francisco Nieva: Coronada y el toro
Edited by Komla Aggor
Critical Texts 64
- ‘La prestigiosa editorial asentada en Cambridge Modern Humanities Research Association acaba de publicar una edición de la obra del genio español Francisco Nieva, «Coronada y el Toro», con una magnífica introducción y estudio del especialista en Nieva Komla Aggor, profesor de la Texas Christian University. «Coronada y el Toro» es una obra maestra.’ — Martín-Miguel Rubio Esteban, ABC 29 September 2020, 14
- ‘La Modern Humanities Research Association acaba de publicar una excelente edición de la obra de Francisco Nieva, Coronada y el toro, preparada por el investigador experto en la obra de Nieva, Komla Aggor.’ — www.francisconieva.com September 2020
Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose
Edited by James Diedrick
Critical Texts 70 / Jewelled Tortoise 6
- ‘This book will be an indispensable new resource for students and scholars of Victorian women’s poetry, travel writing, decadence, Aestheticism, the New Woman, queer and feminist literature, and literature and science.’ — Barbara Barrow, Volupté 5.2, Autumn/Winter 2022, 149-53 (full text online)
Published July 2021
André Chénier: Poetry and Revolution 1792-1794
David McCallam
Transcript 24
- ‘What quickly becomes clear is the scholar’s own passionate devotion to the poet, but also his fascination for the terrible narrowing vortex of his life, caught in the teeth of a particular moment, in the machinery of the historical circumstance.’ — Stephen Romer, Modern Language Review 119.2, 2024, 270-71 (full text online)
Published April 2021
Life and Death on the Plantations: Selected Jesuit Letters from the Caribbean
Edited and translated by Michael Harrigan
Critical Texts 68
- ‘This book should be in the library of every university and college in which the history of slavery is taught.’ — Bertie Mandelblatt, Modern Language Review 117.4, October 2022, 718-19 (full text online)
Published December 2020
Delw y Byd: A Medieval Welsh Encyclopedia
Edited by Natalia I. Petrovskaia
MHRA Library of Medieval Welsh Literature
- ‘Dr Petrovskaia’s new discussion and partial edition is to be warmly welcomed. She provides illuminating contextual discussion of the text’s source … with admirably detailed footnotes providing guidance for further reading.’ — David Callander, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 83, 2022, 99–101
- ‘Petrovskaia’s edition of Delw y Byd is a very welcome addition to the still limited group of edited texts available for teaching Middle Welsh. It provides a refreshing insight into the variety of literature that was consumed by readers in the Middle Ages. At the same time, it materially advances understanding of an understudied text in an accessible manner. In this sense, the book will be just as important for experienced researchers as for student learners. It is only to be hoped that more volumes of this kind will follow in its footsteps.’ — Ben Guy, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 69, 2022, 292-95 (full text online)
- ‘These volumes serve an important function in terms of bringing less familiar texts into a wider sphere of scholarly interest. While students of Middle Welsh will be able to work through the texts, producing their own translations with the help of notes and glossaries, scholars seeking access to these particular texts, along with a comparative perspective on medieval translation, Latinity, geography, and hagiography, will find these editions extremely valuable.’ — Helen Fulton, Modern Language Review 118.4, October 2023, 604-06 (full text online)
Published October 2020
Hubert Crackanthorpe: Selected Writings
Edited by William Greenslade and Emanuela Ettorre
Critical Texts 71 / Jewelled Tortoise 7
- ‘This is an informative, comprehensive, and detailed introduction to Crackanthorpe for those who know little about him. It is an illuminating companion edition for those already familiar with his dark vision of life in the 1890s, which his own life trajectory so much resembled.’ — Jad Adams, Volupté 5.1, 2022, 98–102 (full text online)
- ‘A much-needed edition that successfully presents the range and importance of Crackanthorpe’s writing... Overall, Selected Writings is an accessible introduction to Crackanthorpe that makes proper consideration of his work alongside others of the ‘Tragic Generation’ possible. Highly recommended.’ — Jessica Gossling, Modern Language Review 118.4, October 2023, 604-06 (full text online)
Published August 2020
Louis Sébastien Mercier, Comment fonder la morale du peuple: Traité d’éducation pour l’avènement d’une société nouvelle
Edited and translated by Geneviève Boucher and Michael J. Mulryan
Critical Texts 69
- ‘The editors are to be thanked for making this text available in this completely bilingual MHRA edition, with not only the main text in facing-page translation, but also the editors’ Introduction and notes.’ — Jessica Stacey, Modern Language Review 117.4, October 2022, 719-20 (full text online)
Published July 2020
Hystoria Gweryddon yr Almaen: The Middle Welsh Life of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins
Edited by Jane Cartwright
MHRA Library of Medieval Welsh Literature
- ‘This is a fine volume, nicely produced as part of the MHRA’s library of Medieval Welsh literature series. The introduction offers a full guide to the historical and philological context of the text, and succeeds in drawing out broader interest via its links to medieval Welsh historiography and hagiography and the wider European context. It will finally provide full-quality access to this interesting and multifaceted text, both for specialists in Welsh language and literature and for those interested in european hagiography of the period more generally.’ — David Willis, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 82, 2021, 91-93
- ‘The Hystoria will undoubtedly appeal to scholars and students of Middle Welsh, and especially of Early Modern Welsh literature, as well as to academics interested in hagiography in general.’ — Luciana Cordo Russo, Studia Celtica 55, 2021, 189-91
- ‘These volumes serve an important function in terms of bringing less familiar texts into a wider sphere of scholarly interest. While students of Middle Welsh will be able to work through the texts, producing their own translations with the help of notes and glossaries, scholars seeking access to these particular texts, along with a comparative perspective on medieval translation, Latinity, geography, and hagiography, will find these editions extremely valuable.’ — Helen Fulton, Modern Language Review 118.4, October 2023, 604-06 (full text online)
Published March 2020
La poética de Lorenzo de Zamora: una apología de la literatura secular
Edited by Ascensión Rivas Hernández
Critical Texts 55
- ‘This edition will doubtless be of use to scholars of humanist and baroque poetic theory and, more generally, to anyone with an interest in the survival and tradition of classical authors in the Spanish language.’ — Jesús-M. Nieto Ibáñez, Modern Language Review 117.3, July 2022, 507-08 (full text online)
- ‘Este nuevo volumen de la MHRA Critical Texts, el número 55, contribuirá, sin duda, a ampliar el conocimiento de un autor no demasiado atendido y de una obra que llegará a nuevos lectores a partir de esta cuidada edición, del detallado y explicativo estudio introductorio que la antecede y la bibliografía asimismo completa que aporta.’ — Carina Zubillaga, Bulletin of Spanish Studies February 2022 (full text online)
Published July 2019
Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry
Edited by Nerys Ann Jones
MHRA Library of Medieval Welsh Literature
- ‘If you are looking for a well-written, meticulous examination of a range of early medieval Welsh texts concerning Arthur in their manuscript and linguistic context, then Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry should be on your shelf.’ — Daniel Helbert, Speculum 96.1, January 2021, 232-33
- ‘I am sure that this book will be much used and appreciated by lecturers and also by scholars studying the pieces of poetry contained in it, and quite likely also by advanced students of medieval Welsh. There are still too few editions that do fine-grained analyses of early texts, particularly of early poetry, and this book represents one of the successful efforts towards filling this gap.’ — Stefan Schumacher, Journal of Celtic Linguistics 22, 2021, 172 (full text online)
- ‘This is another very welcome volume in the MHRA Library of Medieval Welsh Literature ... Nerys Ann Jones deserves our thanks for turning a large and disparate body of material into this attractive, coherent, and easily navigable book. I expect to be using it well into the future.’ — Barry J. Lewis, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 83, 2022, 89–92
Published May 2019
Aphra Behn's Emperor of the Moon and its French Source Arlequin, Empereur dans la lune
Edited by Judy A. Hayden and Daniel J. Worden
Critical Texts 67
Marmontel and Demoustier, Le Misanthrope corrigé: Two Eighteenth-Century Sequels to Molière’s ‘Le Misanthrope’
Edited by Joseph Harris
Critical Texts 65
- ‘This volume is an important addition to the corpus of Molière reception in the Enlightenment. The arc of Le Misanthrope’s reception can be traced back to the play’s first appearance with critical responses such as Donneau de Visé’s Lettre écrite sur la comédie du Misanthrope; but this new comparative and elucidating edition of two eighteenth-century sequels will encourage scholars and students to encompass a wider range of texts in their reflections on Molière’s audiences and adaptors.’ — Suzanne Jones, H-France 20.54, April 2020
- ‘Harris’s Introduction is essential reading. It provides a nuanced and fine-grained analysis of the two treatments, placing them into the context of the respective authors’ careers and the wider context of eighteenth-century ideas... the volume is a very welcome publication and is sure to be of great interest to a wide audience interested in Molière and his literary posterity.’ — Mark Darlow, Modern Language Review 115.4, October 2020, 917-18 (full text online)
Published February 2019
Francisco Delicado, Retrato de la Loçana andaluza: Estudio y edición crítica
Edited by Rocío Díaz Bravo
Critical Texts 56
Published October 2018
Isabella Sori, Ammaestramenti e ricordi
Edited by Helena Sanson
Critical Texts 48
Published September 2018
La Belle Dame qui eust mercy and Le Dialogue d'amoureux et de sa dame: A Critical Edition and English Translation of Two Anonymous Late-Medieval French Amorous Debate Poems
Edited by Joan Grenier-Winther
Critical Texts 60
- ‘The poems themselves are presented with facing-page translations, in clear and idiomatic English, making this edition eminently useful for scholars and students alike.’ — unsigned notice, Medium Aevum 88, 2019, 184
- ‘This volume is a welcome addition to studies of fifteenth-century French poetry, especially within the context of the Quarrel of the Belle dame sans mercy.’ — Joan E. McRae, Modern Language Review 115.1, 2020, 178-79 (full text online)
- ‘Joan Grenier-Winther has provided a welcome new bilingual scholarly edition of two important poems (each about four hundred lines) out of around twenty love poems long recognized as ‘the cycle of the Belle Dame sans mercy’... Scholarship is served by the excellent Introduction, comprehensive list of variant readings, description of all manuscripts and early books up to 1617, and an extensive bibliography with separate categories for other editions, critical studies, and manuscript studies.’ — Linda Burke, French Studies 74.1, January 2020, 107-08 (full text online)
Published August 2018
The Blind Bow-Boy by Carl Van Vechten
Edited by Kirsten MacLeod
Critical Texts 62
- ‘Kirsten MacLeod’s new MHRA Critical Texts edition of The Blind Bow-Boy makes it possible and attractive to bring Van Vechten into both the undergraduate and graduate classroom by illuminating the novel’s complex recipe for hedonism... In every sense, then, MacLeod’s framing of the novel makes it feel at once more significant and more enjoyable, and its availability now in an affordable paperback form will hopefully bring more scholars, students, and general readers into contact with its pleasures.’ — Kristin Mahoney, Textual Cultures 12.2, 2019, 144-46
- ‘If one were to add The Blind Bow-Boy to a class on modernism, New York literature of the 1920s, or even a twentieth-century literature survey, this edition would make the work accessible to a wide range of students because it serves in itself as an excellent introduction to modernist work. Highly recommended.’ — Michelle E. Moore, Modern Language Review 116.3, July 2021, 500-01 (full text online)
Published July 2018
Decadent and Occult Works by Arthur Machen
Edited by Dennis Denisoff
Critical Texts 53 / Jewelled Tortoise 4
- ‘What’s here will certainly enliven the reading lists of many undergraduate courses on the Victorian Gothic, but, hopefully, it will also allow Machen to be seen not simply as a writer of ‘shockers’ but as a significant and distinctive contributor to the wider literature of his day. The edition is bolstered by a helpful bibliography of secondary works and a chronology of Machen’s life and times. It is well produced and very competitively priced, meaning that it should find a home on university reading lists as well as on the hungry shelves of acquisitive Machenites such as myself.’ — Nick Freeman, Volupté 1.2, Winter 2018, 165-70
- ‘This is an invaluable scholarly edition of Machen's work which makes a thoughtful case for his profound, but idiosyncratic contribution to Decadence.’ — Timothy J. Jarvis, Faunus 38, 2018, 56
- ‘In taking the complexities of Machen’s relationship with the Decadent movement as its starting point, Denisoff’s volume is a significant intervention. ... There is an authentic sense of the volume as a carefully curated experience... a valuable teaching edition.’ — Jane Ford, Modern Language Review 115.3, July 2020, 712-13 (full text online)
Published May 2018
Eliza Haywood, The Fortunate Foundlings
Edited by Carol Stewart
Critical Texts 59
- ‘This volume is a worthwhile read and is highly recommended.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.2, April 2019, 245 (full text online)
- ‘Carol Stewart’s new edition is of exceptional value. The volume is consistently and expertly footnoted. Historical personages are briefly identified, and likely references are offered. More importantly, Stewart’s introduction provides a brief but clear historical summary, a useful contextualization of the text in Haywood’s oeuvre, and a thoughtful analysis of the novel’s key features.’ — Matthew J. Rigilano, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 33.1, 2020, 168-71
- ‘A key addition to Haywood scholarship, doing much to show her adroit handling of different genres as well as offering a new perspective on an author about whom there is still much to discover.’ — Jennifer Buckley, Modern Language Review 115.4, October 2020, 902-03 (full text online)
Published September 2017
Michel-Jean Sedaine: Théâtre de la Révolution
Edited by Mark Darlow
Critical Texts 63
- ‘Théâtre de la Révolution is an impeccably researched edition of Michel-Jean Sedaine’s last operatic works... Sedaine’s Théâtre de la Révolution will be required reading for scholars of eighteenth-century theatre and music. Thanks to Darlow’s introduction, the work is also an essential contribution to scholarship on cultural production and policy during the Revolution... Overall, eighteenth-century French musical theatre, ignored by dix-huitièmistes for generations, has a champion in Mark Darlow and a welcome new title in his edition of Sedaine’s last librettos.’ — Logan Connors, H-France 18.95, April 2018
- ‘This is another admirable critical edition from Darlow which sheds new light on a playwright’s transition from Ancien Régime to Revolution.’ — Clare Siviter, Modern Language Review 114.1, January 2019, 144-45 (full text online)