Charlotte Smith S Emmeline Or The Orphan Of The Castle

In an exploration of the societal limitations for women regarding marriage and property in the eighteenth century, this gothic masterpiece is an early work of feminist fiction. Emmeline is orphaned and raised in a grand castle in the English countryside by her uncle, Lord Montreville. The legitimacy of Emmeline's birth cannot be proven and so she has no property to inherit and no social standing with which to find herself a husband and security. As she navigates the treacherous landscape of eighteenth-century England, she must unravel the secrets of her birth in a time of societal upheaval. This volume is part of the Mothers of the Macabre series, celebrating the gothic horror masterpieces of pioneering women writers who played a pivotal role in shaping and advancing the genre. First published in 1788, this classic work of gothic fiction was Charlotte Smith's first novel. Against the backdrop of grand castles and lush landscapes, the volume delves into the complexities of class, gender, and the plight of the marginalised.

Emmeline, The Orphan of the Castle is the first novel written by English writer Charlotte Turner Smith; it was published in 1788. A Cinderella story in which the heroine stands outside the traditional economic structures of English society and ends up wealthy and happy, the novel is a fantasy. At the same time, it criticises the traditional marriage arrangements of the 18th century, which allowed women little choice and prioritised the needs of the family. Smith's criticisms of marriage stemmed from her personal experience and several of the secondary characters are thinly veiled depictions of her family, a technique which both intrigued and repelled contemporary readers.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ National Library of Scotland N006219 London: printed for T. Cadell, 1788. 4v.; 12°