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| Page updated 24 July 2008 |
The Modern Humanities Research Association's new book series aims to provide affordable critical editions of lesser-known literary texts that are out of copyright and which were not currently in print (or were difficult to obtain).
The texts are taken from the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Titles will be selected by members of the distinguished Editorial Board and edited by leading academics. There is no requirement for a subvention by authors.
The aim is to produce scholarly editions rather than teaching texts, but the potential for crossover to undergraduate reading lists is recognized. Priced at £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 the books will appeal both to academic libraries and individual scholars. The titles are available for direct ordering worldwide online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et al., and through the usual trade channels (inc. Bertrams, Ingram, Baker & Taylor.) The first two volumes were published in June 2005.
Proposals are invited from prospective authors who should submit a completed Book Proposal Form. Books should be in the range of 30,000 to 50,000 words.
Vol. 1. Odilon Redon: Écrits.
ISBN 0-947623-63-9. Published June 2005. This is the first edition of nine fictional writings by the French painter, Odilon Redon (1840-1916). The text has been established from a transcription made by André Mellerio (the original manuscript being unavailable). "The most interesting recent insight into Redon
and his work emerges from this slender edition of his own early writings,
carefully edited and presented by Claire Moran." |
ISBN 0-947623-64-7. Published June 2005. An edition of the anonymous fifteenth-century French
translation of Alan of Lille’s ‘Liber Parabolarum’
which had never previously been edited. The 1492 print by Antoine Vérard
survives in fewer than a dozen copies. "The reader now has a reliable text of the
Paraboles ... Alan of Lille’s collection, whether in Latin
or in French, was an important work, both for the later Middle Ages
and for the humanistic learning of the Renaissance, and it can now be
studied both as a work in its own right and as part of the cultural
life of its time."
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Vol.
3. Letzte Chancen: Vier Einakter von Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. ISBN 0-947623-65-5. Published October 2005. This edition will introduce readers to four virtually
unknown short plays by the woman who is today considered the best-known
German-speaking woman writer of the 19th century. "Meticulously edited ... In her informative and
very readable introductory essays, Kord traces Ebner-Eschenbach’s development
and reception as a dramatist, and presents the individual plays in an
engaging manner."
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Vol. 4. Macht des Weibes: Zwei historische Tragödien von Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Edited by Susanne Kord. (In German.) ISBN 0-947623-69-8. Published December 2005. A companion volume to Letzte
Chancen, this edition will introduce readers to two virtually
unknown tragedies by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach: Maria Stuart in
Schottland. Historische Tragödie; and Marie Roland. Trauerspiel
in fünf Aufzügen. "In her informative and very readable introductory
essays, Kord traces Ebner-Eschenbach’s development and reception as
a dramatist, and presents the individual plays in an engaging manner.
The perspective is particularly illuminating and subtly differentiated
in the case of the two historical tragedies, Maria Stuart in Schottland
and Marie Roland."
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Vol. 5. A Critical Edition of La tribu indienne; ou, Édouard
et Stellina by Lucien Bonaparte. ISBN 0-947623-66-3. Published October 2006. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 / €19.99 The publication of this novel by the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte will bring to light a fascinating lost text, making it readily available to scholars for the first time. It will contribute to the recent re-evaluation of the French literary canon through consideration of key sentimental texts. "This re-edition of a novel by Lucien Bonaparte, one of Napoleon’s younger brothers,
is the latest in the MHRA’s admirable series of critical texts ... [It] is to be welcomed as providing a new addition to
the corpus of Revolutionary literature available for study ... Cecilia Feilla’s introduction
is clear and concise, dealing briefly with the author’s life and situating the novel
within the tradition of sentimental exoticism."
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Vol.
6. Dante Alighieri: Four Political Letters. ISBN 978-0-947623-70-8. Published October 2007. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 This edition will provide a new translation and analysis of four of Dante’s Latin letters on political themes, highlighting the role of these letters not only as documents which emphasise and support the political views put forward most explicitly in the De monarchia, but also as pieces of persuasive and impassioned writing which, on many different levels, reflect the concerns of the author’s great poetic work, the Commedia.
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Vol. 7. La Disme de Penitanche
by Jehan de Journi. ISBN 0-947623-71-X. Published October 2006. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 The book is an annotated edition and study of La Disme de Penitanche, a manual written in Old French verse, designed to help members of the laity prepare themselves for confession. Composed in 1288 by Jehan de Journi, the text provides a fascinating mixture of the learned and the popular. "Students of vernacular penitential texts will welcome this edition, particularly as
the editor provides extensive explanatory notes, interspersed with comments of linguistic
interest."
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Vol.
8. François II, roi de France by Charles-Jean-François
Hénault. ISBN 0-947623-67-1. Published November 2006. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 The Président Hénault (1685-1770) wrote several plays including François II, roi de France, a five-act tragedy depicting ‘la jalousie des princes de sang contre messieurs de Guise’. First published in 1747, this play was considered by Hénault and his contemporaries to be the first of a new kind of theatre, one written specifically to be read rather than to be performed. It is therefore arguably the founding text of the tradition of armchair theatre that encompasses Diderot, Rétif de la Bretonne, Musset and Hugo.
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Vol.
9. Istoire de la Chastelaine du Vergier et de Tristan le Chevalier.
ISBN 978-0-947623-68-5. Spring 2008. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 This 15th-century text is a late prose version of the highly successful and much imitated Chastelaine de Vergi. The moral of the anonymous author's tale is that love stories need to be kept secret, and that discretion is a lover's best quality.
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Vol. 10. La Peyrouse dans l’Isle
de Tahiti, ou le Danger des Présomptions: drame politique. ISBN 0-947623-72-8. Published October 2006. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 This anonymous play is based on two well-known episodes in Pacific exploration: the voyage of Louis de Bougainville around the world, and his arrival in Tahiti very soon after Samuel Wallis’ discovery of it, and the later voyage and disappearance of Jean-François de la Pérouse.
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ISBN 978-0-947623-73-9. Published May 2008. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595-1640) was known in his lifetime as the Christian Horace. This edition includes all known English translations of his poems. The texts are accompanied by an introduction presenting the biography and works of Sarbiewski, as well as a short critical analysis of the translations included in the volume. "These days, enthusiasts of Neo-Latin poetry in general, and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (Sarbievius) in particular, are few and far between. Perhaps only they will recognize the great importance of this new anthology, but all who do take cognizance of it will receive it with gratitude."
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Vol.
12. La Devineresse ou les faux enchantemens. By Jean Donneau
de Visé and Thomas Corneille. ISBN 978-0-947623-74-6. Published November 2007. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 A critical edition of the biggest box-office hit of seventeenth-century France whose extraordinary success depended on its historical context.
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Vol.
13. Phosphorus Hollunder und Der Posten der Frau von
Louise von François. ISBN 978-0-947623-75-3. Autumn 2008. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 François’s novels and novellas are notable for their strong story lines, rich prose and psychological realism. The two early novellas Phosphorus Hollunder and Der Posten der Frau (both 1857) illustrate the essential preoccupations of François’s work as a whole.
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Vol.
14. Le Gouvernement present, ou éloge de son Eminence, satyre ou la Miliade. ISBN 978-0-947623-77-7. Autumn 2009. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 This satirical poem, known popularly as the Miliade because of its thousand-verse length (in octosyllabic verse), was printed anonymously around 1636. The poem’s endurance and plentiful and specific political references make it a lively commentary encompassing discontent with the increasingly centralized government before the outbreak of the civil wars, the Frondes (1648–53). |
Vol. 15.
Ovide du remede d'amours. ISBN 978-0-947623-78-4. Published February 2008. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 This edition presents a hitherto unpublished version of the Remedia amoris, thus expanding the corpus of materials available to students of the transmission of Ovid in the Middle Ages. It also provides, for the first time, a detailed survey of the existing versions of the Remedia. |
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Vol. 16. Angelo Beolco (il Ruzante), 'La prima oratione'. ISBN 978-0-947623-79-1. Autumn 2008. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 This volume presents a full transcription of the three extant manuscripts of Angelo Beolco's Prima oratione, delivered to Cardinal Marco Cornaro in 1521 at his villa in Asolo subsequent to his entrance as bishop of Padua. |
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Vol. 17. Richard Robinson, 'The Rewarde of Wickednesse'. ISBN 978-0-947623-85-2. Summer 2009. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 This volume provides the first printed critical edition of a text which has recently attracted the attention of scholars working on early modern English literature. |
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Vol. 18. Henry Crabb Robinson, 'Essays on Kant, Schelling, and German Aesthetics'. ISBN 978-0-947623-88-3. Spring 2009. Pbk £12.99 / $24.99 / €19.99 It is usually assumed that the only British Romantic writer who engaged meaningfully with German philosophy was S. T. Coleridge. This edition disproves that assumption. The book collects thirteen essays and one set of lecture notes written by Henry Crabb Robinson during his period in Germany (1800-1805). |