Charlotte Temple
Written by Susanna Rowson
Introduction by Jane Smiley
ABOUT THIS BOOK
First published in America in 1794, Charlotte Temple took the country by storm-in fact, it was this nation's first bona fide “bestseller.” Susanna Rowson's most famous work is the story of an innocent British schoolgirl who takes the advice of her depraved French teacher- with tragic consequences. Seduced by the dashing Lieutenant Montraville, who persuades her to move to America with him, the fifteen-year-old Charlotte leaves her adoring parents and makes the treacherous sea voyage to New York. In the land of opportunity, Charlotte is callously abandoned by Montraville. Alone and pregnant with an illegitimate child, she valiantly fights to stave off poverty and ruin.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the first American edition.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
About the Introducer:
JANE SMILEY is the bestselling author of eleven acclaimed works of fiction, including The Age of Grief, The Greenlanders, A Thousand Acres (for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize), Horse Heaven, and Good Faith. She lives in California.
Fiction | Modern Library | Trade Paperback | May 2004 | $10.95 | 0-8129-7121-3
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or, Gustavus Vassa, the African
Written by Olaudah Equiano
Edited by Shelly Eversley
Introduction by Robert Reid-Pharr
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In this truly astonishing eighteenth-century memoir, Olaudah Equiano recounts his remarkable life story, which begins when he is kidnapped in Africa as a boy and sold into slavery and culminates when he has achieved renown as a British antislavery advocate. The narrative “is a strikingly beautiful monument to the startling combination of skill, cunning, and plain good luck that allowed him to win his freedom, write his story, and gain international prominence,” writes Robert Reid-Pharr in his Introduction. “He alerts us to the very concerns that trouble modern intellectuals, black, white, and otherwise, on both sides of the Atlantic.”
The text of this Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive ninth edition of 1794, reflecting the author's final changes to his masterwork.
“Equiano's Narrative was so richly structured that it became the prototype of the nineteenth-century slave narrative.”
-Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
About the Introducer: ROBERT REID-PHARR, one of the country's leading scholars of early African-American literature, is a professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives in Brooklyn.
About the Editor: SHELLY EVERSLEY is an assistant professor of American literature at Baruch College, specializing in African-American literature and culture. She is the author of Integration and Its Discontents and coeditor of Race and Sexuality.
Social Science - African-American Studies | Modern Library | Trade Paperback |
May 2004 | $10.95 | 0-375-76115-2
January 12, 2005