Published January 1981

A Bibliography of Editions of the Writings of Benjamin Constant to 1833
C. P. Courtney
Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association 10


Published January 1991

Dialogue and Narrative Design in the Works of Adalbert Stifter
Brigid Haines
Bithell Series of Dissertations 17 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 34


Published November 1997

Breeches and Metaphysics: Thackeray's German Discourse
S. S. Prawer
Studies In Comparative Literature 1

  • ‘What Thackeray did not publish Professor Prawer has done for him in this welcome addition to the Thackeray literature.’ — unsigned notice, Times Literary Supplement 1997
  • ‘It is good to have a book of this kind that so thoroughly covers its subject. I have the distinct impression that Prawer has really hunted down and rounded up every last German reference there is in Thackeray and I am glad he has done it.’ — John R. Reed, Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 11.4, 2000, 326-7
  • ‘Prawer's comprehensive analysis is thoroughly researched and convincing throughout. One of the strongest features of his monograph is the skilful mastery with which the author examines the interaction between the different discourses depicted above, as well as their function in Thackeray's oeuvre as a whole. An essential study for scholars in the field of Anglo-German literary relations and the wider domain of cultural transmission.’ — Susanne Stark, Modern Language Review 96.1, 2001, 298-9 (full text online)

Published June 2000

Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View of Science 1780-1955
Peter D. Smith
Studies In Comparative Literature 4

  • ‘Smith is able to show convincingly how ambivalence about the role of science or scientific tendencies permeates these literary works, and he offers interesting insights into the sometimes subtle thematization of scientific ideas in literature.’ — Elizabeth Neswald, British Journal for the History of Science 35, 2002, 363-4
  • ‘Smith's mastery of both primary and secondary sources is remarkable, and his bibliographies provide a useful guide to the (often vast) secondary literature... Demonstrates the extraordinary richness and importance of the vein of research into which Smith has tapped, and puts much other work in so-called Cultural Studies to shame.’ — Paul Bishop, Modern Language Review 97.2, 2002, 505-7 (full text online)
  • ‘In this thorough study of the exchange between science and literature, Peter D. Smith skillfully argues that the idea of these Two Cultures existing in isolation from one another is overly simplistic... An excellent contribution to the vital research currently examining the interdisciplinary nature of scientific and literary works.’ — Heather I. Sullivan, Monatshefte 94.4, 2002, 541-2

Published May 2005

Benedikte Naubert (1765-1819) and her Relations to English Culture
Hilary Brown
Bithell Series of Dissertations 27 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 63

  • ‘A detailed bibliography [rounds] out this meticulous, scholarly work. Brown’s thorough and perceptive investigation of Naubert’s fiction and English literature makes previous work on the author obsolete. It takes Naubert’s oeuvre out of the niche of gender studies and places it squarely in the mainstream of German literary history and in the rich tradition of Anglo-German literary and cultural cross-currents.’ — Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Modern Language Review 102, 2007, 565 (full text online)

Published October 2006

A Critical Edition of La tribu indienne; ou, Édouard et Stellina by Lucien Bonaparte
Edited by Cecilia Feilla
Critical Texts 5

  • ‘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.’ — Jennifer Yee, Modern Language Review 103.1, 2008, 234-35 (full text online)
  • ‘This is a fascinating reprint of the original edition including illustrations of the only novel ever written by Lucien Bonaparte ... [It] is of particular interest to anybody studying early nineteenth-century French politics.’ — Kirsty Carpenter, New Zealand Journal of French Studies 29.2, 2008, 52-53
  • ‘The text of Feilla’s edition—with five lush plates illustrated by Prud’hon—is one of only three extant copies of La Tribu indienne. Revolutionary literary studies are currently a 'hot' topic, but excavating, analyzing, and eventually constructing a viable canon out of this material will occupy scholars for years to come. We are thus grateful to Feilla for this edition of Lucien Bonaparte’s La Tribu indienne.’ — Julia V. Douthwaite, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 23.1, 2010, 253-55

Published August 2007

Regressive Fictions: Graffigny, Rousseau, Bernardin
Robin Howells
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Robin Howells investigates the connections between three eighteenth-century best-sellers in chronological order... everyone will find fresh insights on the eighteenth-century success stories.’ — Simon Davies, French Studies 63.1, 2009, 88-89

Published July 2008

Exotic Subversions in Nineteenth-Century French Fiction
Jennifer Yee
Research Monographs in French Studies 25

  • ‘An elegant and thoroughly researched monograph... a valuable reference for future work on exoticism, imperialism and postcolonial France.’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 120
  • ‘A highly effective demonstration of the use of postcolonial perspectives to open up new possibilities for our reading of the nineteenth century.’ — Timothy Unwin, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 561-62 (full text online)
  • ‘Yee’s text, stranded between the dogmatic (un)certainties of “1991” and the questions that have opened up in its ongoing aftermath, provides a salutary, if unintended, reminder of what it is that we, as postcolonial critics, have been invested in, and of what is at stake in our ongoing attempts at justifying this investment (the “aesthetic turn”) or contesting it (the “political turn”). Were the praise-songs of “oppositionality,” which once (à la Lowe, Chambers, Scott) dominated our field, simply the epiphenomena of a strategy of containment through which postcolonial studies was bound to a certain vision of “complexity” at odds with the anti-colonial, and unrepentantly non-literary, dynamics of a work like Orientalism, so that its truly radical (and, first and foremost, anti-Zionist) politics could be rendered palatable to an Anglo-American academic audience ever in search of a specious newness but intent on preserving the old, bourgeois order upon which literary studies, and the affect that so intimately at’ — Chris Bongie, Francophone Postcolonial Studies 7.2, 2010, 89-94
  • ‘Bongie's review is alarmingly accurate. I do indeed accept 'literature as [my] chosen and delimited field of study' (though I try to see that field as part of a broader history). And he is entirely accurate in saying that I see the subversions offered by nineteenth-century literature as largely falling short of 'true resistance'... Of course the literature of the nineteenth century is racist according to our modern definitions; but racism is so vast and insidious a phenomenon that it is not in itself analytically useful and requires careful historical nuancing. In any case, although I am most interested in an approach that combines aesthetic and political concerns, and would regret such a rigid separation as Bongie appears to think necessary, I also differ from him in my belief in a supple and many-voiced criticism that does not need to dictate one single mode of textual analysis.’ — Jennifer Yee's invited reply to Chris Bongie's FPS review, Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies 1.1, Spring 2010, 15-17
  • ‘In this elegant, lucid, and original study of four ‘exotic’ works by Chateaubriand, Hugo, Flaubert, and Segalen, Jennifer Yee turns her back on Edward Said's negative depiction of nineteenth-century Orientalism in order to read her chosen texts from a post-colonialist perspective... Impressive and admirably comparative.’ — Michael Tilby, French Studies 64.4, 2010, 495-96

Published December 2008

The Cervantean Heritage: Reception and Influence of Cervantes in Britain
Edited by J. A. G. Ardila
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Resulta reconfortante para cualquier investigador interesado en los textos de Miguel de Cervantes comprobar que, tras la explosión de estudios surgidos en torno a las celebraciones del año 2005, cuarto centenario de la publicación del Quijote, el cervantismo está más vivo que nunca. De hecho, es precisamente ahora, tras el paso del ciclón de publicaciones que trajo consigo dicho aniversario, cuando surge la oportunidad de realizar análisis nacidos más al calor de la curiosidad real y el rigor y menos de la oportunidad o el oportunismo. Este libro supone una muy valiosa aportación para el campo de los estudios cervantinos pero también para el estudio de la literatura británica, y especialistas de ambos campos encontrarán en él material ineludible y original con el que ganar en conocimiento y sobre todo, una herramienta con la que continuar avanzando en el no siempre bien conocido ni estudiado campo de las relaciones literarias y culturales hispano-británicas.’ — Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Iberoamericana IX.36, 2009, 189-91
  • ‘Rather than emanating from the Cervantesmania that has informed most of the book-length studies on Cervantes's influence on English-speaking writers [since the 2005 anniversary year], the present volume benefits from the fact that its contributors come from among the pre-2005 generation of critics, who have drawn on their experience of digging out Cervantes's actual influence on British literature.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011

Published July 2009

Retrospectives: Essays in Literature, Poetics and Cultural History by Terence Cave
Terence Cave, edited by Neil Kenny and Wes Williams
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘A very welcome overview of several of the central themes of Cave’s work.’ — John D. Lyons, French Studies 65.1, January 2011, 93-94
  • ‘An excellent overview, enhanced by the editors’ astute introduction, of this highly influential critic’s ideas... an impressive testament to a distinguished and continuing critical career.’ — Emma Herdman, Modern Language Review 106.4, 2011, 1156-57 (full text online)

Sensibility, Reading and Illustration: Spectacles and Signs in Graffigny, Marivaux and Rousseau
Ann Lewis
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘A detailed and compelling analysis... Moreover Lewis skilfully combines insights from various fields (literary history, genre studies, theory of representation, reader response) to generate thought-provoking analysis, to provide a nuanced assessment of sensibility, and to suggest additional avenues that warrant investigation.’ — Diane Beelen Woody, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 23.3, Spring 2011, 586-89
  • ‘Thoroughly researched, clearly written, and handsomely produced, this book is a significant contribution to scholarship on French eighteenth-century literature... Readers should be glad that Lewis has so adeptly read the signs and spectacles.’ — Heidi Bostic, French Review 84.5, April 2011, 1029-30
  • ‘Précis, bien informé et solidement documenté, l’ouvrage constitue un apport précieux et stimulant aux recherches sur l’illustration romanesque auquel il articule une réflexion intéressante sur le genre et la réception du roman sensible.’ — Florence Magnot-Ogilvy, French Studies 66.2, April 2012, 245-46
  • ‘[Lewis's] meticulous approach is valuable in providing an at-a-glance overview of the numerous illustrated editions of these well-known novels as well as a point of reference for researchers in the field. The consideration of nineteenth- and twentieth-century illustrations adds depth to Lewis’s study and gives credence to her theory of illustration as a ‘reading’ of a text at various points in history. This is exemplified by the ‘Romantic’ interpretation of the character of Saint-Preux in the nineteenth century, for example, or the eroticised presentation of La Vie de Marianne for a French audience of the 1930s.’ — Una Brogan, Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies 35.3, September 2012, 444-45
  • ‘En somme, Intimicy and distance parvient à ouvrir des horizons insoupçonnés sur un concept indissociable de la modernité et saura profiter à nombre de chercheur.cheuse.s qui s’intéressent aux cultures du XIXe siècle.’ — Daniel Long, Dalhousie French Studies 119, 2021, 184-185

Published February 2010

The Wallenstein Figure in German Literature and Historiography 1790-1920
Steffan Davies
Bithell Series of Dissertations 36 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 76

E. T. A. Hoffmann and Alcohol: Biography, Reception and Art
Victoria Dutchman-Smith
Bithell Series of Dissertations 35 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 75

  • ‘Clearly written in a jargon-free style, Dutchman-Smith’s study offers an illuminating discussion of a dimension of Hoffmann’s work that has received relatively little scholarly attention up until now, and which will be of interest to specialists and advanced students alike.’ — Birgit Röder, Modern Language Review 106, 2011, 904-05 (full text online)

Published July 2011

Textual Wanderings: The Theory and Practice of Narrative Digression
Edited by Rhian Atkin
Legenda (General Series)


Published August 2011

German Women's Writing of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Future Directions in Feminist Criticism
Edited by Helen Fronius and Anna Richards
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘The volume will be of great use to students and researchers alike, as a source of well-written critical scholarship and of pointers to severe deficits in current research. It offers productive methodologies for taking the enquiry forward in areas vital to a fuller, more nuanced understanding of the place of women writers as part of the whole picture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultural history in the German-speaking lands.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.4 (October 2012), 489
  • ‘Thus the book’s structure, like its title, ultimately collapses: the future has not yet happened. Yet it is glimpsed here—and it will indeed necessarily entail killing off and reviving the female author and the female reader, undoing and redoing gender, sexuality, and herstory, embracing pluralism and firing the canon. And it will only have been achieved once the gatekeepers become contributors and all critics—including men—are doing feminist criticism.’ — Robert Gillett, Modern Language Review 109.2, April 2014, 547-48 (full text online)

Published October 2012

Narrative Responses to the Trauma of the French Revolution
Katherine Astbury
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Katherine Astbury’s welcome monograph includes within its purview a range of now forgotten texts and successfully questions the established view that the Revolution had little impact on novels written in the years following 1789.’ — Michael Tilby, French Studies 67.4, October 2013, 566
  • ‘Astbury offers an original theoretical approach to the fiction of the 1790s and sheds new light on many of these forgotten texts. Her study will be welcomed by eighteenth-century scholars.’ — Ruth P. Thomas, New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century Spring 2014, 11.1, 86-88
  • ‘One of the great merits of the book is that Astbury has actually read, rather than glossed, these unloved novels. As a result, she can demonstrate how ostensibly escapist fiction was saturated with contemporary references... The book provides fresh and detailed exposition of key novels within the revolutionary corpus, and triumphantly succeeds in making a case for the political sub-currents bubbling away within some seemingly innocuous fiction.’ — Tom Stammers, French History March 2014, 28.1, 126-27
  • ‘Astbury’s account of 'The English Novel and the Literary Press in France during the Revolutionary Decade' is the center and triumph of her book. In this chapter, she makes a 'systematic examination of editors' and translators' choices' that reveal a dynamic, cross-Channel conversation about the convulsions in France and their consequences.’ — Gina Luria Walker, European Romantic Review 25.4, 2014, 522-27
  • ‘Astbury’s clear, elegant prose engages the reader and Astbury convincingly shows how the fiction of the Revolutionary decade, while perhaps not overtly political, nonetheless responded to Revolutionary events—whether through portrayals of moral regeneration in 1791 or through tales of exile in 1797.’ — Annie K. Smart, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 43.1-2, 2014
  • ‘Succeeds in changing the terms of a debate that had relegated a decade of literature to virtual oblivion. Astbury is absolutely right to insist on the historical and literary significance of the fiction of the 1790s. Given the historical impact of these years, it seems extraordinary that later generations of scholars have expressed such little interest in these works.’ — Lesley H. Walker, Modern Language Review 110.2, April 2015, 547-48 (full text online)
  • ‘Katherine Astbury’s Narrative Responses offers a fascinating counterpoint to the many studies that have focused on literary culture in pre-revolutionary France. Astbury asks important questions about novels produced during the Revolution: What kinds of texts did contemporaries want to read? How influenced were their authors by current events? And, finally, how political were those texts?’ — Mette Harder, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 28.3, Spring 2016, 593-94
  • ‘Le livre de Katherine Astbury mérite incontestablement d’être recommandé. Fondé sur une approche théorique et méthodologique clairement définie, il explore avec minutie un corpus de textes souvent méconnus (en laissant délibérément de côté les œuvres de Sade et Rétif) et a le mérite de ne pas proposer une lecture myope des œuvres de la période qui, pour n’être pas toutes ouvertement consacrées à l’écriture des événements, n’en livrent pas moins un regard sur l’Histoire et la Révolution.’ — Paul Kompanietz, Dix-huitième siècle 46, 2014, 724-25

Published February 2013

French Divorce Fiction from the Revolution to the First World War
Nicholas White
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Impeccably researched and well-written... Developing White's earlier survey of the family novel (1999), grounded in historical knowledge, guided by sociological readings, and underpinned by a massive amount of reading from the past two centuries, this ambitious study concludes with a meditation on contemporary images of relationships, in ways that hint at a welcome third volume of the triptych.’ — Rosemary Lloyd, Times Literary Supplement 27 September 2013
  • ‘Fortunately for nineteenth-century French readers, the advent of divorce did not signal an untimely end to the marriage of familial and plot structures... And just as fortunately for contemporary readers, Nicholas White has provided the first study of these distinctively modern tales, deftly weaving long-forgotten divorce novels, many of them quite popular in their time, into a complex and insightful broader sociocultural but also deeply literary and historical narrative.’ — Rachel Mesch, Romanic Review 2014, 104.1-2, 172-74
  • ‘A persuasive study of a society, and its literature, exploring the implications of new ideas of personal freedom.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.2, April 2014, 232
  • ‘The originality of this important study is clear: it is the first book in English or French to focus on the divorce fiction that surrounds the Loi Naquet. The monograph’s ambitious breadth is reflected in the range of authors discussed: in addition to references to canonical figures such as Maupassant and Bourget, renewed consideration is afforded to the ‘Great Unread’, or what is termed ‘“minor” women writers and unfashionable patriarchs’ (p. 145), including André Léo, Claire Vautier, Marie-Anne de Bovet, and Camille Pert, and Anatole France, Alphonse Daudet, and Edouard Rod.’ — Steven Wilson, French Studies 68.2, April 2014, 257
  • ‘Nicholas White has considered a series of important questions about nineteenth- and twentieth-century French novels... His work opens the way for interested readers in fields as various as history, literature, sociology and gender studies to ask and answer new questions of their own about these novels now.’ — Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, French History 28.2, June 2014, 277-78
  • ‘An important contribution to the study of nineteenth-century French literature and the family. The authors covered are an exciting selection of, as White puts it, ‘unknown women and forgotten men’. He displays tremendous knowledge of the corpus and authors, but also of the eras and literary movements discussed. His inspired choice to conclude with American novelist Diane Johnson’s 1997 Le Divorce brings his story to the present, but also contributes to his broader argument about the literary value of texts beyond the canon.’ — Phoebe Maltz Bovy, Modern Language Review 109.4, October 2014, 1086-87 (full text online)
  • ‘Témoignant d’une profonde érudition, apportant une grande attention aux contextes idéologiques et biographiques, cet essai sans équivalent, aux analyses perspicaces, aux enjeux précis, à l’écriture claire et non départie d’humour, offre une lecture aussi enrichissante qu’agréable.’ — Claudie Bernard, French Review 89.1, 2015, 288

Published March 2013

Shandean Humour in English and German Literature and Philosophy
Edited by Klaus Vieweg, James Vigus and Kathleen M. Wheeler
Legenda (General Series)


Published May 2013

Stendhal's Less-Loved Heroines: Fiction, Freedom, and the Female
Maria C. Scott
Research Monographs in French Studies 37

  • ‘Maria C. Scott’s work can be considered as highly suggestive in the sense that, upon closing the book, one cannot help continuing to contemplate the various hypotheses put forward. Freedom, joy and self-invention are such essential imperatives for Stendhal, who had no qualms in referring to himself as “Mr. Myself,” that one is tempted to extend the book’s premise to his other fictional characters. In itself, this is a powerful testimony to the fact that this critical work has more than earned its place on the shelves among the rich collection of Stendhalian criticism to date.’ — Martine Reid, H-France 14, 2014
  • ‘In this well-documented and cogently argued study Scott seeks to redress the balance [of Stendhal criticism] in favour of a female point of view, citing in her defence Stendhal’s own belief in the inevitable partiality of the reader... Her book should help to make these figures better understood and loved than they have sometimes been in the past.’ — Sheila M. Bell, French Studies 68.3, July 2014, 400-01
  • ‘It is literally impossible to imagine the current state of European literary studies in this country without the achievements of Legenda. And within that output, its Research Monographs in French Studies, sponsored by the Society for French Studies, has played a particularly cherished role... The thirty-seventh volume in the series, by Maria Scott, follows in the wake of some excellent nineteenth-century volumes by the likes of Christopher Prendergast, Diana Knight and Jennifer Yee; and it sits well among such company.’ — Nicholas White, Journal of European Studies 44, 2014, 293-94
  • ‘This is a concise, elegant, and original reassessment of some of Stendhal’s most important and, as it turns out, misunderstood heroines that will be of equal interest to both specialist scholars and students keen to challenge the dominant critical view of these female characters as limited and frustrated by their narrative possibilities.’ — Susannah Wilson, Modern Language Review 109.4, October 2014, 1084-85 (full text online)
  • ‘Disons-le d'entrée, et sans barguigner: ce livre, petit par le volume, est un grand livre... une étude aussi originale que pertinente, propre à renouveler en profondeur l'approche des personnages féminins stendhaliens... M. Scott a l'insigne mérite de s'attaquer intrépidement aux textes majeurs, de dominer l'ensemble des commentaires et d'apporter "du nouveau" dans des domaines depuis longtemps reconnus et parcourus, et qu'on croyait à jamais connus.’ — Yves Ansel, L'Année stendhalienne 13, 2014, 441-47
  • ‘Engaging reading. As the title suggests, the author gets personally involved and defends these fictional characters almost as if they were friends, women whose company she would like to keep, and she wants us to love them too. The style is alert, the tone optimistic, and while she necessarily has her work cut out for her convincing us that less-loved characters are lovable, her writing has the type of energy that makes readers love Stendhal.’ — Brigitte Malhuzier, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 43.1-2, 2014
  • ‘Offering a “sympathetic reading of [Stendhal’s] heroines that have often been seen as unsympathetic or unworthy of the love of the heroes and readers alike”, Scott approaches her analysis from a feminist perspective, using French existentialism— particularly Sartre’s and Beauvoir’s notions of freedom—as her theoretical framework... Written in an approachable style, this thought-provoking study offers a new perspective on Stendhal’s work, and is sure to be of interest to scholars and readers of the nineteenth-century author.’ — Kathryn M. Bulver, French Review 89.1, 2015, 280

Published June 2013

Goethe's Visual World
Pamela Currie
Germanic Literatures 3

  • ‘This volume is a marvelous study of how Goethe participated in perception theory, physics, cognition studies, and psychology. Currie’s work is a significant step toward uncovering and clarifying some of the mental images and cognitive elements that are already critically reflected in Goethe’s perceptive writings.’ — Beate Allert, Monatshefte 105.4, 2013, 716-18
  • ‘Goethe himself would surely have found this volume impressive, spanning as it does a multitude of disciplines with equal facility... The impression one carries away on closing the book is of the immense sense of intellectual ferment which characterised Goethe’s age, and a search for ways of reappraising human beings’ relationship to their environment in both spiritual and physical terms.’ — Susan Halstead, The Brown Book (Lady Margaret Hall) 2014, 132-34
  • ‘Pamela Currie’s arguments never fail to challenge the reader, but are crafted with a lightness of touch, and display a sustained resistance to theoretical excess. The book works across genres and disciplines—and it works beautifully. It is a fitting way to remember a much-respected scholar, who died as the book was in preparation.’ — Charlotte Lee, Modern Language Review 109.4, October 2014, 1122-23 (full text online)
  • ‘T. J. Reed refers to this volume as the 'product of a remarkable and coherent research interest'. It is also the product of a remarkable intellect that fearlessly sought unexplored regions of literary inquiry and unhesitatingly made connections where others might not. In sum, this is a volume that is not merely worthwhile to read but one whose intellectual esprit is worthy of emulation.’ — Walter K. Stewart, Goethe Yearbook 2015, 284-86
  • ‘Currie besticht durch ihr virtuos gehandhabtes, interdisziplinäres Vorgehen, ihre Gedankenschärfe und Entdeckerfreude, ihren Blick in die Tiefe und in die Ferne. Offensichtlich war auch sie—die reich bebilderte Aufsatzsammlung ist eine postume Hommage—ein ausgeprägter Augenmensch.’ — Franz R. Kempf, German Studies Review 38.2, May 2015, 416-18

Published June 2014

Eugénie et Mathilde by Madame de Souza
Edited by Kirsty Carpenter
Critical Texts 26

  • ‘I will be including Souza’s novel in my courses and am grateful to scholars such as Kirsty Carpenter for making these obscure but important texts available.’ — Antoinette Sol, Modern Language Review 111, 2016, 553 (full text online)
  • ‘Kirsty Carpenter’s edition of Madame de Souza’s 1811 novel ... contributes to the rediscovery, understanding and appreciation not just of a writer too often considered as a minor author, but also of an overlooked period in the history of French literature, between the Revolution of 1789 and the first Napoleonic campaigns (1798–1800s).’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 51, 2015, 87-88
  • ‘Réjouissons-nous donc que Mme Carpenter nous ait restitué ce roman parfaitement oublié, qui se trouve être, à la relecture, un des textes les plus lucides de son époque.’ — Paul Pelckmans, Dix-huitième siècle 47, 2015, 645-46
  • ‘"a valuable resource for students, professors, and researchers interested in the history of the French Revolution, eighteenth-century society, women's studies, or the development of literary genres in France."’ — Theresa Kennedy, New Zealand Journal of French Studies 36, 2015, 161-62

Published December 2014

Books and Periodicals in Brazil 1768-1930: A Transatlantic Perspective
Edited by Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 9


Published December 2016

E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Orient: Romantic Aesthetics and the German Imagination
Joanna Neilly
Germanic Literatures 11

  • ‘A thorough and innovative monograph... E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Orient is a well-written study that serves an indispensable function as a comprehensive and careful survey of the theme of orientalism in Hoffmann’s works. Neilly is ready to criticize Hoffmann’s orientalism when necessary, but what is more important, she is also receptive to those aspects of Hoffmann that cannot be reduced to orientalist discourse or are even critical of orientalism.’ — Asko Nivala, European Romantic Review August 2018 (full text online)
  • ‘The book is written in a clear, crisp style... It is rich, dense, and full of insight and overall an important and original addition not only to the body of Hoffmann scholarship; it also adds an important facet to our understanding of the Romantic preoccupation with the Orient.’ — Juergen Barkhoff, Modern Language Review 114.4, October 2019, 886-87 (full text online)
  • ‘Hoffmann has until now been presented as something of a peripheral Orientalist, with more attention typically being paid to Schlegel and Novalis. Neilly’s searching study serves as a thoughtful corrective, revealing across a series of close readings the range and variety of Eastern motifs that are implied and appropriated in Hoffmann’s fictions, or—as is most often, and most intriguingly, the case—critically reflected upon, in a way that turns his ironic mirror back onto German aesthetics and indeed onto the notion of the fixed self.’ — Polly Dickson, German Studies Review 43.3, October 2020, 607-10 (full text online)

Published May 2017

Enlightenment and Religion in German and Austrian Literature
Ritchie Robertson
Selected Essays 1

  • ‘A tour de force in the study of German-speaking cultures with a range and depth that takes readers from the Classical period in the eighteenth century to twentieth-century Modernism... Here we are confronted with, or rather treated to [...] erudition, insight and unerring logic.’ — Carol Tully, Times Literary Supplement 23 January 2018
  • ‘Any ambitious colleagues wishing to uncover the secret behind Robertson’s talent for producing the appropriate formulation are again referred to his introductory remarks, in which he recalls having learnt to use a typewriter whose roller would only turn in one direction, making it impossible to go back and emend what had been written. The present volume of essays suggests that there could be no better method of training future scholars than by providing them with similarly challenging, character-building implements.’ — Osman Durrani, Modern Language Review 113.2, April 2018, 433-35 (full text online)

Published September 2017

Sublime Conclusions: Last Man Narratives from Apocalypse to Death of God
Robert K. Weninger
Studies In Comparative Literature 43

  • unsigned notice, The Year's Work in English Studies 98.1, 2019, 657-58