Francisco Delicado, Retrato de la Loçana andaluza: Estudio y edición crítica
Edited by Rocío Díaz Bravo
Critical Texts 56•8 February 2019
Alexis Piron, Gustave-Wasa
Edited by Derek Connon
Critical Texts 57•8 March 2016
- ‘Connon’s rich critical edition boasts extensive contextualization and intriguing paratexts. His wide-ranging Introduction analyses the tragedic elements of pity, terror, and character self-revelation, alongside Piron’s spirited self-defence against Prévost’s accusations of plagiarism.’ — Síofra Pierse, Modern Language Review 113.1, January 2018, 244-45 (full text online)
Commemorating Mirabeau: Mirabeau aux Champs-Elysées and other texts
Edited by Jessica Goodman
Critical Texts 58•1 August 2017
- ‘In this fine book, Jessica Goodman provides the full corrected and modernized texts of five plays from the era of the French Revolution, three of them published in 1791 and two available only in manuscript... Goodman has done wonderful detective work, providing us with the performance history of the plays, the number of people likely to have seen them, and the amount the authors made on the productions... I hope that Goodman will continue to haunt the archives and bring more gems like these plays back into circulation, and I am confident that readers of her introduction and notes will find them useful and instructive.’ — Robert H. Blackman, H-France February 2018, 18.30
- ‘In this intriguing volume, Jessica Goodman unites five texts dating from the weeks following the death of Mirabeau on 2 April 1791... Particularly interesting is her analysis of Mirabeau aux Champs-Élysées and Gouges’s authorial strategies. This volume is an important contribution to scholarship on the Revolutionary period and, more generally, to our understanding of the commemorative practices of the late eighteenth century.’ — John R. Iverson, French Studies 72.4, October 2018, 601-02
Eliza Haywood, The Fortunate Foundlings
Edited by Carol Stewart
Critical Texts 59•31 May 2018
- ‘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)
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•28 September 2018
- ‘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)
Gabriel-Marie Legouvé, La Mort d'Abel
Edited by Paola Perazzolo
Critical Texts 61•7 November 2016
The Blind Bow-Boy by Carl Van Vechten
Edited by Kirsten MacLeod
Critical Texts 62•31 August 2018
- ‘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)
Michel-Jean Sedaine: Théâtre de la Révolution
Edited by Mark Darlow
Critical Texts 63•29 September 2017
- ‘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)
Francisco Nieva: Coronada y el toro
Edited by Komla Aggor
Critical Texts 64•15 November 2021
- ‘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
Marmontel and Demoustier, Le Misanthrope corrigé: Two Eighteenth-Century Sequels to Molière’s ‘Le Misanthrope’
Edited by Joseph Harris
Critical Texts 65•31 May 2019
- ‘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)
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•31 May 2019
Life and Death on the Plantations: Selected Jesuit Letters from the Caribbean
Edited and translated by Michael Harrigan
Critical Texts 68•12 April 2021
- ‘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)
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•21 August 2020
- ‘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)
Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose
Edited by James Diedrick
Critical Texts 70 / Jewelled Tortoise 6•12 November 2021
- ‘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)
Hubert Crackanthorpe: Selected Writings
Edited by William Greenslade and Emanuela Ettorre
Critical Texts 71 / Jewelled Tortoise 7•19 October 2020
- ‘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)
Michael Field, For That Moment Only and Other Prose Works
Edited by Alex Murray and Sarah Parker
Critical Texts 72 / Jewelled Tortoise 8•4 July 2022
- ‘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
La Découverte de l’île Frivole by Gabriel-François Coyer
A Bilingual Edition by Jean-Alexandre Perras
Critical Texts 76•16 September 2022
Decadent Writings of Aubrey Beardsley
Edited by Sasha Dovzhyk and Simon Wilson
Critical Texts 78 / Jewelled Tortoise 10•18 November 2022
- ‘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
- ‘The appearance of this volume is a notable event in the history of publishing, of nineteenth-century erotica, of the fine arts and of the cosmopolitan spirit of the fin de siècle... an elegant, allusive work of scholarship freighted with the learned references that the art of Aubrey Beardsley demands and deserves.’ — John Stokes, Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism 8, 2023, 121-25
The Pen and the Needle: Rousseau & the Enlightenment Debate on Women’s Education
Edited by Joanna M. Barker
Critical Texts 80•26 November 2021
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Le Vieillard et ses trois filles and Timon d’Athènes: Two Shakespeare Adaptations
Edited by Joseph Harris
Critical Texts 82•13 March 2023
- ‘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)
Alexis Piron, Le Claperman and L’Âne d’or
Edited by Derek Connon
Critical Texts 84•1 December 2022
The Sentinel: An Incomplete Early Novel by Rebecca West
Edited by Kathryn Laing
Legenda (General Series) •1 December 2002
- ‘It is the least surprising thing in the world that Rebecca West should have begun a novel when she was 17, and that parts of it should be very good. She was only 18, after all, when her stinging reviews first appeared in The Freewoman and The Clarion, and caused sleepy Fabian giants to sit up and take notice of this fiercely intelligent Edinburgh schoolgirl juggling axes in the air... Richly rewarding.’ — Claudia FitzHerbert, Daily Telegraph 1 February, 2003, 5
- ‘Quite a coup... West's urgent descriptions of events and characterisations of key figures, from politicians to the Pankhursts, can hardly be bettered. But this is more of a social history than it might first appear, thanks to the journalistic observations woven into her storytelling. Her description of the Daily Mail as 'the encyclopaedia of vulgarity' retains a certain resonance today.’ — Harriet Griffey, Financial Times 22 February, 2003, 4
- ‘An astonishing piece of juvenilia... It is easy to recognise the real women who belonged to the militant Women's Social and Political Union: Mary Gawthorpe, Emily Davidson, Dora Marsden, Emmeline Pankhurst. The rise of the New Woman writing of the 1890s and suffragette fiction of the early twentieth century challenged strict definitions of feminine experience only to replace them with equally rigid rules governing women's social and political roles. West questions such demarcations. Her women long for motherhood and some of the most important suffragists are men. The novel's message is that love is not only more important than political power, it is the source of such power in the modern world and the modern novel.’ — Rosalind Porter, Times Literary Supplement 28 February, 2003, 24
- ‘Here is an emerging and well-read mind confronting public and private matters... Laing's scholarly introduction is a rich tool for reading this novel. Though unsophisticated and fragmentary as a novel, The Sentinel is nevertheless a richly worked resource; a readable and fascinating historical document that brings much of the time and its author to life.’ — Antonia Byatt, Times Higher Education Supplement 18 April, 2003, 28
- ‘Not only the publication of The Sentinel, but the way it has been published, may represent a tidal change in the way its author's work is now received... Fascinating to readers interested in the development of West as a woman, because it is obsessively concerned not only with feminist politics but with sexuality, and with the compelling beauty of certain girls and women, pored over in erotic detail... The most striking passages, which foreshadow the vivid reportage of her maturity, are the accounts of suffragette marches, protests and riots... Carries in it the seeds of almost everything that was to preoocupy West throughout her writing life. Laing's treatment of The Sentinel may complete the transition of her fiction, and of her work as a whole, out of the overcrowded 20th-century mainstream and into the canon.’ — Victoria Glendinning, The Guardian 20 December, 2003, G2
John Ruskin's Continental Tour 1835: The Written Records and Drawings
Edited by Keith Hanley and Caroline S. Hull
Legenda (General Series) •19 December 2016
- ‘At a time when scholars often find it difficult to find support for editions of archival and biographical materials relating to significant cultural figures, it is pleasing that this important volume has found its way into print through the endeavours of the editors and the MHRA, whose Legenda imprint makes high-quality editions of such materials available... The edition is perfectly conceived and delivers something approaching perfection. It should be of interest beyond Ruskin Studies, particularly to scholars of Romantic art, poetry, and landscape tourism, nineteenth-century travel, and Victorian science.’ — Mark Frost, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 863-64 (full text online)
- ‘The interest of the texts collected in this volume is on the whole remarkable. They represent a variety of literary genres ranging from the prose diary, the letter in verse, the dramatic sketch, the short story narrative, genres through which the same travel matter is shaped and reshaped, demonstrating the precociousness and versatility of Ruskin’s genius, his witty ironic vein, but also his brilliant mastery of prose... The recent interest in emotional labour involved in diary and travel writing will certainly profit from the fresh material unearthed by this critical edition.’ — Emma Sdegno, Review of English Studies 69, September 2018, 803-05 (full text online)
Early Welsh Gnomic and Nature Poetry
Edited by Nicolas Jacobs
MHRA Library of Medieval Welsh Literature •1 March 2012
- ‘La simplicité des textes fait de ce livre une excellente introduction au gallois ancien.’ — Pierre-Yves Lambert, Etudes celtiques XXXIX, 2013, 330
- ‘Nicolas Jacobs hat sehr gute Arbeit geleistet; sein Buch wird für lange Zeit die Standardedition dieser notorisch dunklen und schwierigen, aber vielleicht gerade eben deshalb so anziehenden Verse bleiben und darüber hinaus als mustergültiganerkannt sein. — Y gwaith a ganmol ei weithiwr!’ — Stefan Zimmer, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 59, 2012, 271
- ‘Mae Nicolas Jacobs a golygyddion y 'Library of Medieval Welsh Literature' yn haeddu ein diolchiadau gwresog am ailagor maes a esgeuluswyd yn rhy hir ac am wneud y corff hwn o farddoniaeth yn fwy hygyrch i fyfyrwyr ac ysgolheigion mwy profiadol fel ei gilydd. [Nicolas Jacobs and the editors of the Library of Medieval Welsh Literature deserve our warmest thanks for reopening a field of study which has been neglected too long and for making this body of poetry more accessible for students and more experienced scholars alike.]’ — Barry James Lewis, Dwned 18, 2012, 99-107
A Selection of Early Welsh Saga Poems
Edited by Jenny Rowland
MHRA Library of Medieval Welsh Literature •1 September 2014
- ‘A Selection of Early Welsh Saga Poems is a timely introduction to this fascinating genre, and is recommended reading for all beginning and advanced students of early Welsh poetry.’ — Alderik H. Blum, Modern Language Review 111.4, October 2016, 1132-33 (full text online)