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3.0 out of 5 stars
"Classic" Victorian trash, Mar 28 2002
By A Customer
Some popular fiction manages to stand the test of time, and EAST LYNNE falls into that category. For its contemporary readers, EAST LYNNE was one of the exemplars of that emerging genre, the sensation novel: its plot incorporates, among other things, murder, mistaken identity, bigamy, and adultery. Sitting awkwardly in this wild stew of criminal activity are the narrator's pious moral observations and the novel's didactic (and sometimes ponderously satirical) pronouncements on contemporary mores. The characters are mainly cardboard, with the possible exception of the termagant Cornelia Carlyle. The story remains highly readable, largely because the plot moves at a reasonably fast pace, but no-one should approach this book looking for high literature. Mrs. Wood wrote plain--some might say "simplistic"--prose with a minimum of stylistic embellishment, but most readers should find her writing tolerable. In other words, this novel exists in the upper reaches of Danielle Steele-land. It is, nevertheless, an essential text for understanding trends in Victorian popular culture during the 1860s and after.This new edition, probably intended to replace the poorly edited Everyman version, contains a number of "extras." These include letters from Mrs. Wood, the report from publisher's reader Geraldine Jewsbury (herself a popular novelist), data on the novel's publication and serialization, contemporary reviews, contextual material, and selections from one of the many theatrical adaptations of the novel. Like most Broadview publications, this edition is obviously designed for classroom use, although casual readers should also find the additional material helpful. Unfortunately, this edition has something in common with the Everyman version: the editing and proofreading. The text is rife with bizarre word substitutions, as if the MS had been run through a spellchecker without a second reading; typos; and improper accidentals (e.g., semi-colons for apostrophes and commas for periods). The often scattershot footnotes did not help: they were sometimes repetitive (e.g., annotating "Turk" more than once) and often too terse to be of much use. Many notes glossed old sayings whose meanings remain obvious even to today's students. To make matters worse, my own copy was badly printed. Instructors may want to keep these problems in mind.
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