This Week's Acquisitions

• Frances Eastwood, Geoffrey the Lollard (Shaw, n.d.). First published in America. Lord Cobham, persecution, etc. "Frances Eastwood" is a pseudonym for Mrs. D. C. Knevels; one of her teachers, the Rev. Charles Rockwell, gives us a sample of her poetry (scroll down).

• Deborah Alcock, Prisoners of Hope (RTS, n.d.). Short novel about the Reformation in England and Bohemia.

• Elizabeth Hand, Mortal Love (Morrow, 2004). Neo-Victorian fantasy about Swinburne and the Pre-Raphaelites.

• Matthew Stadler, Allan Stein (Grove, 1999). Man goes in search of Gertrude Stein's nephew, apparently has experience out of Thomas Mann.

• James Wilson, The Dark Clue (Grove, 2001). Neo-Victorian novel. Characters from Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (really!) try to write a biography of J. M. W. Turner (really!).

• Gary Krist, Extravagance (Broadway, 2002). Parallel-plot historical novel about financial speculation, set in the 1690s and 1990s.

• Robert Hough, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (Atlantic Monthly, 2001). Fictionalized autobiography of a famed circus performer of the early twentieth century.

• William Trevor, The Story of Lucy Gault (Penguin, 2002). A young girl's decision to run away has unintended and catastrophic consequences.

• Valerie Martin, Property (Talese, 2003). A wealthy Southern woman discovers that her husband is keeping a slave as a mistress.

• Barry Sloan, The Pioneers of Anglo-Irish Fiction 1800-1850 (Colin Smythe, 1986). The Banims, Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, etc.

• Frances Carey, ed., The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come (Toronto, 1999). Representations of the apocalypse in art.

• Judith Page, Imperfect Sympathies: Jews and Judaism in British Romantic Literature and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Discusses Jews writing about Jews as well as more familiar Romantic figures. Revisionary takes on Shylock, Wordsworth on Jews, etc.