by Richard Frohock
Over the past decade, literary scholars have become increasingly engaged with colonial studies and have fashioned various points of focus in their investigations of imperialist narratives, including the figure of woman, cannibalism, the romance of the first encounter, and the tropicopolitan. This book builds on existing work by offering a new focal point: the evolution of the British imperial hero in America from Sir Walter Raleigh's Discoverie of . . . Guiana (1596) to James Grainger's The Sugar Cane (1764), with concentration on narratives produced between the year of Cromwell's Western Design (1655) and the British raid on Cartegena (1741). Each individual chapter isolates a distinct type of colonial hero, furnishing examples from a wide variety of narratives, including some nonfiction essays and tracts, but chiefly novels, plays, and poems. These protagonists, who possess widely differing qualities and virtues, illustrate the shifting apologetics and ideological structures that undergird empire in the eighteenth century. Richard Frohock is an Associate Professor at Oklahoma State University.
ISBN: 0-87413-879-5
Published in 2004
$46.50
by John A. Munroe
This volume presents a varied sampling of the author's writings from the past sixty years, along with some previously unpublished materials. It begins with a long prologue that the author calls a literary autobiography, and this story is continued and amplified in introductory notes that accompany each of the following items. The first essay provides a title for the book and also a subordinate theme, the relationship between Delaware and the city of Philadelphia. This theme reappears in many guises in the background of other items as, for example, in a summary of New Castle's history, in an investigation of an experiment in nonresident representation in Congress, and in explanation of the unique importance of an early Wilmington collector of customs. In the last essay, previously unpublished, the relationship is personalized in a reminiscence contributing to the autobiographical theme with which the book began. Illustrated. John A. Munroe is H. Rodney Sharp Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Delaware.
ISBN: 0-87413-872-8
Published in 2004
$44.50
MARK REINBERGER
This is the first study of this important art form in the American Federal period. Made of a synthetic paste and forced into finely carved moulds, composition ornament graced mantels and other woodwork in American buildings between 1790 and 1820. Robert Wellford of Philadelphia was the foremost American practitioner of the art. He was also a successful entrepreneur, developing a national business with markets from New Jersey to South Carolina. Wellford's ornament encompassed an astonishing array of ornamental, mythological, and nationalistic motifs, making it one of the most important reservoirs of neoclassical imagery in early republican America. The book presents Wellford's life, craft, business, and ornament, as well as the work of his competitors, from New England to the deep south. Also included is a catalog of examples of known Wellford work. There are 117 illustrations.
Mark Reinberger is an Associate Professor of Environmental Design at the University of Georgia.
2003 ISBN 0-87413-760-8 $43.50