The Young Philosopher by Charlotte Smith (review)

102 restricted for all but the most traditional teachers. Jack Lynch Rutgers University CHARLOTTE SMITH. The Young Philosopher , ed. Elizabeth Kraft. Lexington: Kentucky, 1999. Pp. xxxvi ⫹ 397. $47.50; $17.95 (paper). Ms. Kraft’s ‘‘classroomedition’’is‘‘an instrument for teaching.’’ Her account of Smith’s life and works in the introduction not only gives pertinent information about the circumstances of Smith’s life but also provides an important cultural and social context for the position of women in eighteenth-century literary culture. She stresses that Smith’s self-presentation as suffering victim was a conscious choice made in response to her understanding of the literary marketplace . The suffering heroines—particularly Laura and Medora Glenmorris in The Young Philosopher—are not mere idealized figures, Ms. Kraft shows, but help to present Smith’s critique of the overdependent role thrust on most women of the time. Furthermore, Ms. Kraft also emphasizes the political concerns that were an important feature of Smith’s career as well as her occasional but vigorous defenses against critical attacks, thus illustrating that a professional woman writer could use her demure public persona to take positions often thought to lie outside her scope. A few minor problems creep into the notes. One quotation from Burke’s Reflections is not noted, but another one from the same paragraph is. Occasional notes do not provide full information.For example, when Laura Glenmorris refers to the story of the Countess de Guiche, Ms. Kraft reproduces Smith’s note giving the source of the story and remarks that Smith translated the work in question,but she does not summarize or explain what the story is. Yet The Young Philosopher is a novel worth having in the classroom, and Ms. Kraft’s work makes itaccessible. Marta Kvande Keirstead University of Delaware MURRAY G. H. PITTOCK. Inventing and Resisting Britain: Cultural Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1685–1789. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. Pp. x ⫹ 189. $69.95. A Union of Multiple Identities: The British Isles, c. 1750–c. 1850, ed. Lawrence Brockliss and David Eastwood. Manchester : Manchester (distributed in the U.S. by St. Martin’s), 1997. Pp. xviii ⫹ 222. $69.95. Mr. Pittock shows the extent to which Scotland, Ireland, and Wales in the seventeenth century maintained a good degreeof independencefrompoliticallyand culturally dominant London and its environs . Wales, ever considered more barbarous by the powerful neighbors to the east, was less distinct because it was the original Britain of ancient myth. Unlike mostrecentstudiesofBritishidentity,Mr. Pittock’s places Jacobitism at the core of the debate, but avoids the excesses of his fellow travelers. And along hegoes,holding that his period is ‘‘the Jacobite century ,’’ which is moot, and then suddenly ‘‘Those who adopted the High Church position arguably realized that 1688–9 represented a serious decoupling of the Church from legitimistcaesarosacramentalism .’’ His study shows, more clearly than this example, how Jacobite vocabulary was maintained, not necessarily in a pro-Jacobite movement, but in antiWilliamite literature. Thus Dryden’s ‘‘The Lady’s Song’’contains coded iden- ...