The Library Window

In this Victorian tale, a young woman recuperating at her aunt’s house in a Scottish town is spending a good deal of time looking out at the world through an upstairs window. Across the way is a university library; one of its windows holds particular interest―but the things she sees there at one moment are gone the next. Is what she has seen real, or a figment of her adolescent imagination?

In addition to an illuminating introduction, this edition includes a variety of background materials that help to set this extraordinary work of fiction in its literary and historical context.

Annmarie Drury is Associate Professor of English at Queens College, City University of New York; her other books include Translation as Transformation in Victorian Poetry (Cambridge UP, 2015).