Victorian novels: recent acquisitions

One major area of emphasis in the Victorian and Edwardian Literature Collections is work by British women novelists.  Special Collections owns first editions of beloved authors like the Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot; but there is a wealth of literature by novelists who are less celebrated today but produced best-sellers in their own time.

Some of the newest additions to the Literature collections by female authors include:

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Moorland Cottage (1850).  An early novella by Gaskell, which depicts the life of a young girl, Maggie Browne, whose mother mistreats her but spoils her brother Edward.

Lady Anne Isabella Ritchie, Mrs. Dymond (1885).  This novel, by the daughter of author William Makepeace Thackeray, is a family drama set in England’s Lake District and Paris at the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71).

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, All Along the River (1893).  Braddon was a bestselling author of sensation fiction.  The heroine of this novel is tempted to leave her husband, who is away on a tour of duty in India.  Her choice, and its consequences, drive the plot.