Infelicia and Other Writings (Broadview Literary Texts) - Softcover

Menken, Adah Isaacs

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551112841 ISBN 13: 9781551112848

Publisher: Broadview Press, 2002

Synopsis

Adah Isaacs Menken was the most highly paid and most scandalous stage performer of the 1860s. She is also one of the most fascinating and unconventional writers in American literary history, and the first to follow the revolution in poetry started by Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. This edition presents, for the first time, a generous selection of Menken’s uncollected poems and essays, along with the first edition of Infelicia (1868), her only book.

Also included is a range of carefully selected appendices that help contextualize Menken’s writings in terms of theater, Judaism, Bohemianism, women’s rights, and women writers.

About this title

About the Author

Gregory Eiselein is a professor of English at Kansas State University. He is the author of Literature and Humanitarian Reform in the Civil War Era (1996) and the editor of Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings (Broadview Press, 2002).

Review

“With fascinating introduction, notes, and bibliography, Gregory Eiselein clarifies the conflicting accounts of Menken’s enigmatic biography and interprets her personal and literary scandals; his appendices set her poems into a literary and historical context. This superb edition makes the powerful voice of Adah Isaacs Menken come alive for twenty-first century readers.” ― Kathryn Hellerstein, University of Pennsylvania

“Gregory Eiselein’s concise writing and thorough research provide the necessary framework for situating Menken’s writings in relation to the American Civil War era, a world so rife with conflict and contradiction that we may scarcely recognize it as the heart of the Victorian period.” ― Renee M. Sentilles, Case Western Reserve University

Edition details

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1551112841
• ISBN 13: 9781551112848
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 286
• Editor: Eiselein Gregory