Isle of Pines, 1668

John Scheckter is Professor of English at Long Island University, New York. His previous work includes The Australian Novel, 1830-1980: A Thematic Introduction.

'This edition is already a labour of critical love, a book-length study of a seventeen-page piece of fiction.' Times Literary Supplement 'For Scheckter, The Isle of Pines is the very model of a modern major theorist’s dream text: a body of words upon which the twenty-first century’s favourite instruments for cultural and textual analysis may be employed for an exemplary dissection. And it is short enough for a very complete job of it, done with microscopic attention to every detail. Scheckter displays brilliant command of relevant theories that he lovingly applied to suggest what Neville’s uncertain utopia may reveal about ideas of race, class, gender, scientific method, any cultural identities as understood in the seventeenth century and (more fully) as many now understand them.' Science Fiction Studies ’Scheckter’s monograph impresses most by its sustained attention to a rather short early modern fiction. It manages to tease out a wide range of semantic layers that relate directly to a whole range of twenty-first century critical reading practices.’ Notes and Queries 'Everyone who wishes to study The Isle of Pines must engage this book...' The Scriblerian

• Introduction: “The Queens Royal Licence”; Part 1 A Critical Text of The Isle of Pines; Chapter 1 “Which Copy hereafter followeth”: Editions and Procedures; Chapter 2 “If hereafter any ?hould come and find them out”: Translations, Paratexts, and Ghosts; Chapter 3 “I ?hall enquire more Part Icularly”: Veracity, Uncertainty, and Narrative Structure; Chapter 4 “A great help to one another”: Gender, Race, and the New Society; Chapter 5 “The Countrey being thus ?ettled”: The Development of Indigenous Culture; Chapter 6 “The ?trange effects of Powder”: Anglo-Indigenes and European Encounter;