Works of Charlotte Smith, Part III

Stuart Curran, Jacqueline M. Labbe

'Scholars working on Smith have had to make do with editions created on divergent principles and scattered among multiple publishers. They will be delighted to see these volumes...the annotations are clear and copious (including detailed accounts of how her translations differ from the originals) and the books are beautifully produced. Romanticists will be grateful.Summing Up: Essential'- CHOICE

• Part III Volume 11 Letters of a Solitary Wanderer (1800, 1802) An experimental collection of five novellas unified by a nameless Wanderer, this work places each novella in a different geographical setting - Yorkshire, Jamaica, sixteenth-century France, eighteenth-century Germany, and modern Ireland - and is centered around themes of religious strife and pervasive threats to domestic peace. Volume 12 Rural Walks (1795); Rambles Farther (1796); Minor Morals (1798) Smith's contributions to children's conduct literature are notable for their liberal political sentiments, their realistic representation of the rural countryside and their emphasis on precise natural description, and the use of poetry for inculcating moral values. A Narrative of the Loss of the Catherine (1796) This is a brief journalistic piece, written to raise money for the victims of a shipwreck. Volume 13 Who is She? (1798); Conversations Introducing Poetry, chiefly on subjects of natural history (1804); The Natural History of Birds (1807) What is She?, a sprightly comedy, is Smith's only effort for the stage. The Conversations and History of Birds are continuations of her children's writings and are remarkably vibrant works from the now invalid Smith. The Conversations represents the first attempt to teach children how to read poetry; poetry also intrudes, mainly through imaginative fables, on avian culture. In both books Smith's commitment to natural particularity carries moral and political overtones. Volume 14 Poems Including both volumes of Elegiac Sonnets (1784, 1797), The Emigrants (1792), and Beachy Head, and Other Poems (1807), this volume will collect all of Smith's verse, authoritatively edited, into a single volume.