Edward Kimber, The Happy Orphans
Edited by Jan Herman and Beatrijs Vanacker
Critical Texts 29•1 June 2015
Walter Pater: Imaginary Portraits
Edited by Lene Østermark-Johansen
Critical Texts 35 / Jewelled Tortoise 1•1 April 2014
- ‘Long out of print, Imaginary Portraits has finally found a worthy home in print, thanks to what Pater might have characterized as Østermark-Johansen’s ‘minute and scrupulous’ lapidary care.’ — Kit Andrews, Modern Language Review 111.3, 2016, 861-63 (full text online)
- ‘It makes the portraits accessible through the lucid, highly original, and perceptive critical introductions and the useful, often necessary annotations. This is an essential text for students of Pater and Aestheticism.’ — David Riede, Pater Newsletter 65, 2014, 92
- ‘"[Østermark-Johansen] combines an encyclopedic knowledge of Pater's influences and allusions, and an astute understanding of his works and life, with enviable lightness of touch."’ — Kate Hext, Times Literary Supplement 8 August 2014, 11
- ‘The annotations are perhaps the most significant contribution this collection will make, as Pater’s highly allusive prose poses difficulties even to trained scholars – there is nothing close to its combination of comprehensiveness and critical apparatus on the market right now.’ — Matthew Potolsky, Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 24, 2015, 112
- ‘Lene Østermark-Johansen’s magisterial new edition ... offering incisive critical and historical contexts for the individual texts.’ — James Eli Adams, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 59, 2016, 105-08
- ‘Remarkable value and puts the exorbitant prices charged by some other publishers of textual editions to shame.’ — William Baker, The Year's Work in English Studies 95.1, 2016, 1472
- ‘This invaluable edition will hopefully bring some hitherto neglected texts of the Pater canon to a wider readership including undergraduates, especially as it comes for a very reasonable price. A definite "must-buy".’ — Bénédicte Coste, Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens 82, 2015
Arthur Symons, Spiritual Adventures
Edited by Nicholas Freeman
Critical Texts 39 / Jewelled Tortoise 2•10 February 2017
- ‘How gratifying it is, then, to have not one but two new volumes of Symons’ work published by the Modern Humanities Research Association’s Jewelled Tortoise imprint, thoroughly edited and placed in both a biographical and cultural context. The volumes’ editors are all wise enough to balance their informative footnotes with letting Symons’ work shine on its own.’ — Heather Marcovitch, Review of English Studies 2017
- ‘These excellent critical editions of Symons’s poetry and prose… Symons emerges much clearer for their informative and well-judged notes.’ — Kate Hext, Times Literary Supplement 12 January 2018, 3-4
- ‘The great service these two editions do to the study of Symons, and more broadly in developing our understanding of the contours and development of fin de siècle culture as it was negotiated during the period between Victorianism and modernism. We are left with the impression that the Jewelled Tortoise series is a vital scholarly project for researchers working on the period, and the hope that they will continue to publish such important scholarly editions.’ — Giles Whiteley, Notes & Queries September 2018, 459-61
- ‘Freeman’s brilliantly researched Introduction makes a compelling case for these stories as an ‘intriguing example of early modernism, providing further evidence of that movement’s evolutionary development rather than implying a clean break from earlier conventions’... Freeman’s footnotes and introductions to each story are a model: concise, judicious, and enhancing the reading experience without imposing interpretation... Under the expert eye of Catherine Maxwell and Stefano Evangelista, this series is setting a new standard in fin-de-siècle textual scholarship... Just as importantly, these texts are very reasonably priced, which means they can be set in courses on Decadence and fin-de-siècle culture, bringing Symons’s work—enriched by rigorous scholarship—to a new generation of critics.’ — Alex Murray, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 867-70 (full text online)
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)
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)
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
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
Decadent and Occult Works by Arthur Machen
Edited by Dennis Denisoff
Critical Texts 53 / Jewelled Tortoise 4•11 July 2018
- ‘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)
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)
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 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