Overview

Redwood follows Ellen Bruce as she enters adulthood, navigating the clashing social currents of pious New England farmers, southern belles from South Carolina, slave-owning atheists from Virginia, and sophisticated Philadelphia socialites on her journey to discover the secret of her parentage and craft her own identity as a strong American woman. The novel's embedded slave narrative provides a powerful early prototype for later anti-slavery fiction. Ellen's formidable mentor, Debby Lenox, a single woman who stands over six feet tall and makes her own rules about what constitutes respectable behaviour for women, is remarkably refreshing and original almost two centuries after Sedgwick crafted her. This new edition includes a historically and theoretically informed critical introduction that situates the novel within American social and literary history, also featuring a bibliography for further research and appendices detailing the significant differences between the two nineteenth-century editions.

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9781474467674

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Today's readers can now take pleasure in Redwood, the novel in which Sedgwick dismantles gender conventions that call for female deference and dependence and installs in their stead heroines who are independent actors. We are indebted to Jenifer Elmore's splendid introduction that not only situates Redwood in its larger historical context, but also highlights the novel's significance in transatlantic literary culture.--Mary Kelley, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Author Information

Jenifer Elmore is Professor and Chair of English at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Her publications include ""Sedgwick and Edgeworth: A Transatlantic Tale of Emulation, Flattery, and Rivalry,"" Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Studies,"" Spring 2018 and ""Reversing the Curse"" Slavery, Child Abuse, and Huckleberry Finn,"" (with C. Dale Girardi), American Literary Realism, Fall 2016.

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