Mary Ann Parker – författare

Baroque composer George Frideric Handel easily ranks among the world's greatest composers. The first edition of this research guide on Handel appeared in 1988; since that time a great deal of scholarly work has been published on Handel and related areas, including the discovery of a hitherto unknown work. New general resources such as the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), electronic resources such as the RISM libretto catalogue online, and the study of Handel's continuing popularity as evidenced by the new Handel House Museum in London and Handel practice around the world (e.g., Messiah and millennium celebrations in Tonga, singalong Messiahs etc.) are incorporated into this revised edition of the Handel guide.

These narratives explore the fascinating connections between Britain's systems of transportation and resettlement, convictism and slavery in two travelogues from Botany Bay and Sierra Leone.

In 1791, Mary Ann Parker accompanied her husband, Captain John Parker, on a voyage to deliver supplies to New South Wales. A Voyage Round the World, in the Gorgon Man of War (1795) records their travels past the Cape of Good Hope to New South Wales and back, offering valuable insights into late eighteenth-century colonialism, trade, and slavery, as well as the social worlds of Europeans who made careers in the business of empire. Written on subscription following the death of her husband, Parker's travelogue also offers poignant witness to the conditions for women's authorship at the close of the eighteenth century. As she assures her readers, 'nothing but the greatest distress could ever have induced her to solicit beneficence in the manner she has done, for the advantage of her family'. Engaging and observant, Parker's book is an important addition to the canon of early women's travel writing.