Euphemia

Euphemia is a remarkable novel telling the story, in letters, of a British woman’s life in pre-Revolutionary America.

“Susan Kubica Howard’s edition of Euphemia is impressive on several levels. It makes available to contemporary readers an unjustly neglected novel that deserves a much wider audience; it presents an interesting and thought-provoking discussion of the novel’s main themes and concerns; and it fully contextualizes the work by articulating its connections to the social and political milieu in which it was written, as well as to its author’s personal life. Howard’s introduction does a fine job of showing the novel’s active engagement with several of the period’s most important social and aesthetic movements, as well as its significant role in eighteenth century feminist and genre studies. Howard’s discussion of Lennox’s writing with regards to feminist aesthetics and the female traveler/spectator in late eighteenth century America is particularly edifying and suggestive.” — Carole Fabricant, University of California Riverside

Charlotte Lennox’s Euphemia, published in 1790 at the end of her professional career, is an extraordinary account of pre-Revolutionary America from a woman’s perspective. Constructed from letters between Euphemia Neville and her friend Maria Harley, the novel tells the story of Euphemia’s marriage to a thoughtless, arrogant man. During the years Euphemia lives in New York City and at the forts at Albany and Schenectady as the wife of a British army officer, she chronicles in her letters to Maria both her private life and how that life intersects with those of other British men and women, as well as the Dutch, Native American, and African American inhabitants of the colony. Set partially in New York State, where Lennox had herself lived as a girl, it also contains a version of a captivity narrative in the story of the capture of Euphemia’s son by Hurons.

This Broadview edition includes contemporary reviews of Euphemia and a wealth of other contemporary materials on marriage, travel, the picturesque, and the captivity narrative.

• | Author: Charlotte Lennox, Susan Kubica Howard
• | Publisher: Broadview Press Ltd
• | Publication Date: Sep 08, 2008
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781551116181
• | ISBN-10: 1551116189