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PASSING THE TORCH
Fourteen years ago, with the generous sponsorship of Dartmouth College, I launched Review 19. Since that time, thanks to the good counsel of our advisors and editors and the indispensable work of hundreds of reviewers, we have assessed nearly 700 books on British and American literature of the nineteenth century.
But for everything there is a season, and my own season is ending.
Given my age (84) and declining health, I have decided to step down from the editorship. Fortunately, the Provost’s Office of Dartmouth will fund the review for at least three more years, and I have also found a new editor.
He is Andrew Foust, who has been technically managing the website for many years. Since he combines digital wizardry with academic achievement (he holds a PhD in English from the University of California at Irvine), he will bring fresh energy to the editing of this review. The only change we’ll make—with regret—is to discontinue reviewing studies of American literature. This will allow us to sharpen our focus on the study of British literature.
To help Andy, two new Associate Editors will replace Lila Harper and Lisa Ann Robertson, who have been serving us so well for the past few years. Adam Komisaruk, most recently author of Sexual Privatism in British Romantic Writing: A Public of One (Routledge, 2019), will edit reviews of books on Romantic era literature. Mary L. Mullen, author of the prize-winning Novel Institutions: Anachronism, Irish Novels and Nineteenth-Century Realism (Edinburgh, 2019), will oversee reviews of Victorian studies.
Finally, a personal note. Earlier this year, Bloomsbury Academic published my latest book, Politics and Literature at the Dawn of World War II. Since this book has almost nothing to do with the nineteenth century, it cannot be reviewed here, but for two wide-ranging assessments see the New York Review of Books and a review by DeSales Harrison.
My thanks, yet again, to all who have contributed so much to this review and to all--especially Andy Foust--who will carry its torch into the future.
James Heffernan
Professor of English Emeritus
Dartmouth College
www.jamesheff.com
SCROLL DOWN FOR REVIEWS
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Jerome Mcgann BYRON AND THE POETICS OF ADVERSITY (Cambridge UP, 2023) xi + 214 pp. Reviewed by Jonathan Sachs on 2024-02-09 |
Jerome McGann is perhaps best known for his pithy and polemical argument about the "Romantic Ideology," the tendency of Romantic poets to believe that their writing could transcend the material circumstances that produced it and the tendency of Romantic scholars to accept uncritically this self-representation by Romantic poets. Click here to read the full review. |
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Caleb Smith THOREAU'S AXE: DISTRACTION AND DISCIPLINE IN AMERICAN CULTURE (Princeton, 2023) ix + 240 pp Reviewed by Morgan Shipley on 2023-12-04 |
Inundated with an almost endless stream of new media, many of us may now feel almost overwhelmingly distracted by what we see on our various screens, from television to laptops and smartphones. Click here to read the full review. |
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