Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Selected Writings, Volume III: From Novels and Drama, 1842-1888

The third volume of ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH: SELECTED WRITINGS offers readers selections from several of her longer works written between 1842 and the late 1880s: THE WESTERN CAPTIVE (1842), one of the first ＂paperback＂ novels sold in the United States; BERTHA AND LILY (1854), a novel featuring one of the first ＂fallen＂ heroines in the sentimental tradition; THE NEWSBOY, Oakes Smith’s second novel of 1854 and her deepest foray into the lives of the working poor; ＂The Queen of Tramps＂ (1874-1888), a complete novel left in manuscript at the time of her death; and OLD NEW YORK (1853), a historical melodrama bringing a female lead character to the center of late-seventeenth century colonial rebellion in New York City. As in Volumes I and II of this series, Scherman frames and annotates each of these texts in terms of their contemporary reception and their relation to the work of other nineteenth-century writers while offering readers many archival documents published here for the first time.

Timothy H. Scherman is distinguished professor of English at Northeastern Illinois University. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Duke University, his career-long recovery of the life and work of Elizabeth Oakes Smith began in 1991 and continues to the present day. Scherman is founder and president of the Elizabeth Oakes Smith Society and editor of the most comprehensive and current collection of her work.