Brief Mention

Editions

The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 19: Sermons and Discourses, 1734–1738. Ed. M. X. Lesser. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. 2001. xiv, 849 pp. $85.00.

Edwards most likely delivered four hundred sermons and lectures during the four years that this volume covers, and while fewer than half survive, there is a wealth of material in this collection. A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, an account of the Northampton revival; Discourses on Various Important Subjects, a collection of sermons about the Awakening; and other works demonstrate his theological and pastoral philosophies during this era.
 

Davy Crockett's Riproarious Shemales and Sentimental Sisters: Women's Tall Tales from the Crockett Almanacs (1835–1856). Ed. Michael A. Lofaro. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books. 2001. xvii, 334 pp. $29.95.

The nineteenth-century Crockett Almanacs featured more than Davy Crockett's exploits. Crockett was also the narrator of tall tales about backwoods women, and this volume includes 122 of these stories, which recount battles with animals, jokes, courting experiences, encounters with religion, and other adventures. Michael Lofaro's introduction explains the background of Crockett's Almanac and places the tales in the cultural context of the women's movement in the antebellum United States.
 

Cudjo's Cave. By J. T. Trowbridge. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press. 2001. xxxviii, 504 pp. Paper, $24.95.

This antislavery novel, originally published in 1864, weaves together the stories of a Quaker schoolmaster who has an antislavery stance but refuses to fight for the Union, a woman who loves him and is being pursued by an evil slave owner, an escaped slave who is trained as a doctor, and another runaway slave named Cudjo, who risks his life to save others. Dean Rehberger's introduction provides a brief biography of Trowbridge and places this work in the context of the author's other popular fiction.
 

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By Mark Twain. Ed. Victor Fischer and Lin Salamo, with Harriet Elinor Smith and Walter Blair. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. 2001. xxvii, 561 pp. Cloth, $45.00; paper, $14.95.

This authoritative edition of Twain's text is the first one based on Twain's entire manuscript. The edition includes the Edward Windsor Kemble illustrations that appeared in the first edition, photographic reproductions of manuscript pages, and passages from the manuscript that allow critics to see Twain's revisions.
 

Intimate with Walt: Selections from Whitman's Conversations with Horace Traubel, 1888–1892. Ed. Gary Schmidgall. Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press. 2001. xxxii, 319 pp. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $22.95.

With this collection, Schmidgall has done the important work of condensing the nine-volume collection of Horace Traubel's conversations with Walt Whitman. The text is divided into large sections that clearly demarcate Whitman's statements about himself, his work, his views on his contemporaries, events of his era, and death. For easy reference, the text is divided into more minute sections with topics such as the "Gap Between Rich and Poor" and "Don't-Care-a-Damnativeness," a feature that makes this text appropriate for general readers as well as scholars.
 

"At Fault"/Kate Chopin: A Scholarly Edition with Background Readings. Ed. Suzanne Disheroon Green and David J. Caudle. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press. 2001. xxxii, 304 pp. Cloth, $30.00; paper, $15.00.

Originally published in 1890, Chopin's first novel tells the story of a widow who runs a plantation in Louisiana after the Civil War and the love triangle involving her, a man who buys timber from her property, and his alcoholic wife. Chopin's celebrated depiction of Louisiana's Creole culture is well developed even in this early work, and she also explores the tension between industrialism and agrarian traditions in the Old South and the effects of that conflict. This annotated edition also includes reviews, literary sources, and texts concerning the law, history, economy, religions, and class differences in Southern society.
 

The Correspondence of William James: Volume 9, July 1899–1901. Ed. Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Charlottesville: Univ. Press...