New Essays on Maria Edgeworth

Devoted to the varied writings of the influential novelist, children''s author, and educator, this collection situates Edgeworth''s writing in the context of her life and times. Combining postcolonial, historical, and gender criticism, the contributors offer fresh readings of Edgeworth''s novels, stories, letters, and educational texts, including Belinda, Moral Tales, Practical Education, Helen, and The Absentee. Throughout her work, Edgeworth confronts a world whose values, while grounded in tradition and supported by slavery and colonial domination, are being challenged and ultimately changed in surprising ways by women, peasants, servants, and other voices from the margins. In discussing Edgeworth and her writing, the contributors also offer innovative perspectives on the novel and other central issues of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. The collection will be invaluable to established scholars working in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, women''s studies, and children''s literature, as well as to students encountering Edgeworth for the first time.

In this critically acclaimed work, for which she was awarded the Prix de L''Assemblee Nationale in 1994, sociologist Dominique Schnapper offers a learned and concise antidote to contemporary assaults on the nation. Schnapper''s arguments on behalf of the modern nation represent at once a learned history of the national ideal, a powerful rejoinder to its contemporary critics, and a masterful essay in the sociological tradition of Ernest Renan, Alexis de Tocqueville, Emile Durkheim, and Raymond Aron. If Schnapper asserts, the fate of liberal democracy is coterminous with that of the national ideal, then the nation''s fate and the answer to this question must be of pressing interest to us all. Reflecting deeply on both the nation''s past and future, Schnapper places her hopes in what she terms "the community of citizens."No mere exercise in sociological abstraction, Schnapper''s case for the nation also entails a practical political objective. In a time of radical difference, the national ideal may be the last, great social unifier. This book deserves a place alongside the works of Elie Kedourie, Ernest Gellner, Anthony Smith, and other classics in the study of nationalism and nationality. This work will be of interest to sociologists, historians, and political scientists alike.