Kelroy Edited by Richard S. Pressman and Kelroy Edited by Betsy Klimasmith (review)

Kelroy (1812) by Rebecca Rush is one of the most important novels of the early Republic. Unfortunately, the fine 1992 Oxford University Press version edited by Dana Nelson has been out of print for several years. Two presses, the not-for-profit Early American Reprints and the Canadian Broadview Press, have recently published editions of this novel geared to different academic levels. Richard S. Pressman’s meticulously edited version is ideal for high school or lower-division literature survey students. Betsy Klimasmith’s scholarly edition of the novel provides extensive contextual scaffolding to promote individual student research projects at the upper-division and graduate level. These two editions of Rush’s novel complement one another and would be fine additions to the classroom.

Rush’s 1812 novel is unique among its contemporaries in several ways. Unlike some of the earliest American novels, for example, The Power of Sympathy (1989), Charlotte Temple (1791), and The Coquette (1797), Kelroy is not a seduction novel. Instead, it might be better categorized as a novel of manners in a transatlantic urban gothic tradition. Unpacking that definition, we would start with the novel of manners label. Like Jane Austen, Rebecca Rush is primarily concerned with class tensions and courtship rituals. Unlike Austen, Rush sets her novel in the Philadelphia of the early Republic, a socially unstable and occasionally violent setting. The action of the novel is situated in the parlors of middle-and-upper class Americans as Mrs. Hammond campaigns to secure her own future through the profitable marriages of her daughters, Lucy and Emily. The novel is firmly positioned within a transatlantic context, like The Female American (1767) or Female Quixotism (1801); the women in these novels seek to understand the differences between European and American gender roles and expand their own economic and educational opportunities. Kelroy also contains elements of the American gothic tradition, best exemplified by the dark novels of Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland (1798), Ormond (1799), and Arthur Mervyn (1799–1800). As a hybrid of so many literary threads in the pre-1830 American literary tradition, Kelroy is a significant bridge text from the disparate origins of the early American novel to the era of the US sentimental best-sellers in the 1850s. Therefore, it is imperative for students across academic levels to have access to this remarkable early American novel.

The Early American Reprints edition carries a brief introduction by Karen A. Weyler, which usefully introduces the author, the time period, and the novel to students unfamiliar with early American literature, history, economics, and social customs. The edition contains almost three hundred notes supplied by Pressman, which may prove to be invaluable to the novice reader of early American literature. Pressman defines slang terms and archaic words for inexperienced readers: for instance, “transports,” “a clinker,” “a Squire Gallipot,” or “stupid to a proverb.” He also explains games, dances, social customs, economic terms, and historical events referenced by the text. These notes are crucial for novice students reading the text over two hundred years after its publication. How many non-English majors could explain a “loo-table,” “St. Tammany Society,” “small beer,” or “cotillion”? The admirable Early American Reprints edition of Kelroy would be a marvelous asset in the classroom of an instructor who wishes to introduce high school or lower-division literature survey students to their first pre-1830 American novel.

The Broadview Press version of Kelroy represents another stellar addition to its growing catalog of scholarly editions of hard-to-find texts with feminist or environmental perspectives. The introduction by Betsy Klimasmith offers a rigorous intellectual challenge to upper-division and graduate students. In addition to contextualizing the author and the work, Klimasmith raises a series of research questions for students to ponder as they move forward to read the novel. What makes this Broadview version so valuable for apprentice literary scholars is the series of seventeen supplementary readings. Grouped...