Précis

I Précis I Cassandra Gainer University of North Carolina, Greensboro Byatt, A. S. The Oxford Book of English Short Stories. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 439 pp. $30.00 In her introduction, Byatt claims that her only criterion for choosing the stories in this collection was that "both the writing and the story should be startling and satisfying, and if possible make the hairs on the neck prickle with excitement, aesthetic or narrative." The resulting anthology is an eccentric mix, featuring stories from Dickens to Graham Greene, from Aldous Huxley to Angela Carter. Byatt does not claim to have created the definitive book of English short stories; rather, as she states in the close of her introduction, the collection "is only partial, but that is its charm. The English are hard to sum up." Readers oÃ- ELT may take note of stories by Hardy, Woolf, Kipling, Lawrence , and Saki as well as the lesser read Charlotte Mew, G. K. Chesterton and Ronald Firbank. The Conradian. Allan Simmons, ed. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B. V. Individual £15.00 Student £10.00 Institutional £20.00 Associated with the Joseph Conrad Society of the United Kingdom, The Conradian is a bi-annual journal "devoted to all aspects of the life and works of Joseph Conrad." The latest issue, Volume 23 (Spring 1998) includes essays by both British and American scholars on topics ranging from "Joseph Conrad and the Ghost of Oscar Wilde" to "Writing, Race, and Illness in The Nigger of the "Narcissus". Volume 22 (1997) was dedicated exclusively to exploring "what kinds of encounter between Conrad and theory were taking place in the late nineties." In his introduction to this issue, volume editor Robert Hampson says that he opted for a "generous rather than a narrow sense of theory," and the chosen essays reflect this with articles that include "Conrad, Theory and Value" and "Ethics and Unrepresentabilty in Heart of Darkness. " Subscription requests addressed to the Hon. Secretary, Joseph Conrad Society (UK), c/o P.O.S.K., 238-246 King Street, London W6 ORF, England Dever, Carolyn. Death and the Mother from Dickens to Freud: Vitorian Fiction and the Anxiety of Origins. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 233 pp. $49.95 The cultural ideal of motherhood was arguably the strongest during the Victorian era, yet many of the novels of the age seem to contradict this ideal with narratives of dead or missing mothers. Dever focuses on this contradiction, and in a marriage of literary study and psychoanalytical theory, explores work 116 BOOK REVIEWS by Dickens and Woolf as well as Freud and Winnicott to illustrate the implications the absent mother has on life and art. In her introduction, Dever claims that "the ideal mother is the ghost that haunts the Victorian novel"; it is the mystery of the mother's absence that fuels the narrative search for origins and identity. In chapter one, "The Lady Vanishes," Dever goes as far as to say that "To write a life, in the Victorian period, is to write the story of the loss of the mother." For those interested in To the Lighthouse, chapter 7 will be of interest: 'Virginia Woolf s Victorian' Novel." Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 200 pp. Cloth $42.50 Paper $17.50 In recent years postcolonial theory has generated volumes of academic writing and inquiry. With this book, Gandhi, an editor of the journal Postcolonial Studies , seeks to provide an introduction to the field that explores both the academic and intellectual background of postcolonialism as well as a treatment of the issues and themes that are at the heart of one of our newest critical discourses . Chapters like "Thinking Otherwise: A Brief Intellectual History," "Postcolonialism and Feminism," and "The Limits of Postcolonial Theory" will be a solid beginning for those unfamiliar with postcolonialism and a vehicle for discussion among those within the field. Halperin, John. Eminent Georgians: The Lives of King George V, Elizabeth Bowen, St. John Philby, and Nancy Astor. 1995; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. 242 pp. Paper $16.95 In his introduction to this paperback reprint, Halperin asks the question, "Does an age...