Secresy - Second Edition (Paperback)

Eliza Fenwick

ISBN 10: 1551112167 / ISBN 13: 9781551112169

Published by Broadview Press Ltd, Peterborough, 1998

About this Item

Paperback. Secresy was Eliza Fenwicks only work for adultsa fact that may help to explain why this extraordinary novel has been so thoroughly overlooked. On one level this is a book that presents fascinating challenges to traditional structures of class and gender. Whereas Mr. Valmont, the villain of the piece, rejects merely the surface forms of fashionable society, the story of his niece Sibella and her friend Caroline implicitly rejects the substance as well as the trappings of a system that rested on class privilege and on female dependence. Secresy is also, though, a remarkable novel of human relationships: of sexuality (Sibellas pregnancy is the occasion for the secrecy that gives the book its title), and of romantic love, but also the female friendship between Sibella and Caroline that is very much at the heart of the book. The relationshipsand the grand themesare expressed through an epistolary technique through which Fenwick (in the editors words) shows "a breadth of sympathy which can find comedic pleasure even in what is disapproved. Eliza Fenwicks fascinating novel Secresy is one of eighteenth-century scholars best-kept secrets. Ruth Perry, MIT Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781551112169

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Secresy - Second Edition (Paperback)
• Publisher: Broadview Press Ltd, Peterborough
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1551112167
• ISBN 13: 9781551112169
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: 2nd Edition
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Secresy was Eliza Fenwick’s only work for adults―a fact that may help to explain why this extraordinary novel has been so thoroughly overlooked. On one level this is a book that presents fascinating challenges to traditional structures of class and gender. Whereas Mr. Valmont, the villain of the piece, rejects merely the surface forms of fashionable society, the story of his niece Sibella and her friend Caroline implicitly rejects the substance as well as the trappings of a system that rested on class privilege and on female dependence. Secresy is also, though, a remarkable novel of human relationships: of sexuality (Sibella’s pregnancy is the occasion for the secrecy that gives the book its title), and of romantic love, but also the female friendship between Sibella and Caroline that is very much at the heart of the book. The relationships―and the grand themes―are expressed through an epistolary technique through which Fenwick (in the editor’s words) shows "a breadth of sympathy which can find comedic pleasure even in what is disapproved.”

About the Author

Isobel Grundy is Henry Marshall Tory Professor at the University of Alberta. She was co-editor of The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. She is author of a biography, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment (1999), and is also a co-Investigator on the Orlando Project (an electronic history of women’s writing in the British Isles).