Brief Mention

Editions

Wieland or, The Transformation: An American Tale and Other Stories . By Charles Brockden Brown. New York: Random House. 2002. xxvii, 376 pp. Paper, $11.95.

In his introduction, Caleb Crain names Brown's novel as the origin of American gothic. He credits Brown with intuiting and expressing America's deepest fears about religious fanaticism, the stability of our political system, the authority of the voice as the seat of identity, and the sanctity of the family. Based on the text of the first published edition of Wieland, this edition also includes several stories republished for the first time since their original appearance, as well as a newspaper account of the gruesome murders that inspired the novel.

The Algerine Captive or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill . By Royall Tyler. New York: Random House. 2002. xxxvi, 255 pp. Paper, $13.95.

This novel begins as a satirical look at late-eighteenth-century society, both North and South, through the eyes of an excessively earnest, myopically intellectual doctor, but when the protagonist's job on a slave ship leads him into enslavement in Algeria, the book becomes deadly serious. Caleb Crain's introduction notes the timeliness of this edition (the only other modern edition of this work was released in the late 1960s), which chronicles one of the nation's first encounters with hostile Muslim nations.

The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground . By James Fenimore Cooper. Ed. James P. Elliott, Lance Schachterle, and Jeffrey Walker. New York: AMS Press. 2002. xxxv, 551 pp. $115.00. CSE Approved.

The Spy was Cooper's second published novel but his first serious attempt to create a uniquely American novel. This first scholarly edition avails itself of the multiple manuscripts, including, for the first time, the manuscript of revisions for the 1831 edition. The volume includes all of Cooper's prefatory materials and notes for each edition, as well as a historical introduction, explanatory notes, and a textual commentary by the editors.

Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott . Ed. Beverly Wilson Palmer. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. 2002. liv, 580 pp. $55.00.

Lucretia Mott is best known for her activism in support of women's rights, but her Quaker faith inspired her to work for broad-based reform addressing temperance, abolition, peace, prisons, and education. This edition makes available approximately one-fourth of Mott's 950 extant letters written between 1813 and 1880, emphasizing the intersection between her public and private life. An introduction, chronology, and biographical directory are also included.

"Wild Apples" and Other Natural History Essays . By Henry D. Thoreau. Ed. William Rossi. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press. 2002. xxvii, 236 pp. Cloth, $45.00; paper, $19.95.

This edition features seven of Thoreau's essays, plus a late lecture, all published between the 1840s and 1860s, as well as a contextualizing introduction by the editor. These essays show generic inflections of both travel and landscape writing and address subjects ranging from commercialization of produce to U.S. westward expansion.

Stephen Crane's Literary Family: A Garland of Writings. Ed. Thomas A. Gullason. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press. 2002. xix, 257 pp. $26.95.

This edition brings together published and previously unpublished writings by Stephen Crane's father, mother, and favorite sister. Work by his father, Jonathan Crane, includes a short story, a lecture, a poem, a sermon on Abraham Lincoln's death, and several essays. Stephen's mother, Helen Crane, is represented by a few letter-sketches, stories, journalistic pieces, and reports to the Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Jersey. His sister, Agnes Crane, is represented by a sketch, poetry, and short stories. With each family member's writings, Gullason offers background about that person and his or her relationship with Crane.

Lafcadio Hearn's America: Ethnographic Sketches and Editorials. Ed. Simon Jo Bronner. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky. 2002. x, 242 pp. $35.00.

Lafcadio Hearn's newspaper articles chronicling the undersides of late-nineteenth-century Cincinnati and New Orleans record a class and ethnic diversity seldom seen in the work of...