Broadview Press Blog

The Legacy of Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience

As the streets of America fill with protesters on a nearly weekly basis since the inauguration of President Trump last month, the writings of Henry David Thoreau remain as relevant as ever. One of his most well-known works speaks to the importance of “cultivating personal integrity in the face of political injustice” according to Bob…

Danny Vickers

It is with great sadness that we report on the death of Danny Vickers, editor of The Autobiography of Ashley Bowen (1728-1813) and advisor to our new Broadview Sources history series. He was a passionate historian who taught at the University of British Columbia, UC San Diego, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Danny will be…

The Grass Cove Massacre from The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman

[The following is an excerpt from The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman, introduced by the editor of our new edition of the book, Lance Bertelsen. For more information on our newly published edition of Hildebrand Bowman, click here.] Inspired by an actual event on Captain Cook’s second voyage and often called “the first New Zealand novel,” The…

Horatio Alger and the Myth of Social Mobility

“Americans vastly overestimate the likelihood of moving up the economic ladder,” Jeff Guo posits in his January 18 article for the Washington Post in which he discusses the myths and reality of social mobility in America. Drawing from Gary Scharnhorst’s introduction to Broadview’s forthcoming edition of Horatio Alger’s social mobility novel, Ragged Dick, Guo draws…

Universities and Virtual Bookstores

Early last year I met with quite a surprise when I visited the bookstore at Queens College in New York. That’s one of a dozen or so North American universities that I call on fairly regularly, and I’d always been impressed by their bookstore operation—both by how well the little store was organized and by…

From Charles Dickens, “What Christmas Is, As We Grow Older”

To celebrate the holiday season this year we thought we would share some words of beauty and hope from the great Charles Dickens, excerpted from from Appendix A of our edition of A Christmas Carol, edited by Richard Kelly. The following is from Dickens’s “What Christmas Is, As We Grow Older.” A happy holiday from…

Colourful Black Friday Sale

For Black Friday, Broadview will be offering the following books with colours in their titles at a 40% discount! Use the code blackfriday40% to get this discount. The sale will run until Monday, November 28. The Red Badge of Courage The Scarlet Letter 2e The Picture of Dorian Gray Sir Gawain and the Green Knight…

Package Pricing at Broadview

Hello everyone, At the wonderful recent NAVSA conference in Phoenix, I was very pleased to hear a great many people commenting positively on Broadview editions (and on Broadview books in general). But I was also surprised to discover how many people who know and like what we at Broadview are doing were not aware of…

On Truth, from For the Sake of Argument

[The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of our forthcoming For the Sake of Argument by Robert Martin. For more information on the book, please visit our website] Truth I said this book is about argument. But why argue about philosoph­ical beliefs? It’s a free country; everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, right? Well,…

From James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

[The following is an excerpt from Appendix F in our recently published The Life of Mr Richard Savage, written by Samuel Johnson. You can see more information about our new edition, edited by Nicholas Seager and Lance Wilcox, on our website.] The young Scots law student James Boswell (1740-95) first met Johnson in 1763, and…

The Ethics of Consuming Animals and Animals Products

[We’d like to share some thoughts on the ethics of consuming animals and animal products in recognition of yesterday’s World Animal Day. Some of the editors of the recently published The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose 3/e are vegan, while others consume animal products; all are agreed that the issue of how animals are treated in…

Pussy Meow: The Autobiography of a Cat

From Appendix E  of Beautiful Joe: Chapter 3 of Pussy Meow: The Autobiography of a Cat by Louise S. Patteson (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs, 1901) To recognize World Animal Day, we thought we would share an excerpt from the appendices of our Beautiful Joe, which sheds light on cat autobiographies and the reasons they were less popular.  This did not,…

Mythical Numbers and Their Role in Politics

In last night’s presidential debate, there were many often contradictory facts and figures thrown out by both candidates. With so many numbers being presented to the public, it is sometimes hard to distinguish what is fact, what is fiction, and how to critically think about the issues. Is That a Fact author Mark Battersby brings…

An Extended Stay at The Grand Babylon Hotel: My thoughts on editing Arnold Bennett’s fantasia

Randi Saloman at the 2006 Arnold Bennett Society Conference at Staffordshire University, holding an Arnold Bennett figurine gifted by the Society, with then Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent Jean Edwards in the background. [This summer we were excited to publish an edition of The Grand Babylon Hotel.  Our editor, Randi Saloman, wanted to share some thoughts on her…

On Editing James Joyce’s Dubliners

[This summer we were excited to publish a new edition of Dubliners.  Below our editor Keri Walsh shares some thoughts on the process of editing James Joyce.] Why edit Joyce? In retrospect, I think it was to repair my relationship with him. My previous project had been editing the correspondence of his publisher Sylvia Beach, the…

Broadview’s Conference Schedule for Fall 2016

Broadview will be exhibiting at the following conferences this season. For those attending, be sure to stop by the book display to say hello! OCTOBER: Rocky Mountain MLA October 11-13 in Boulder, CO Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies October 26-30 in Kingston, ON NOVEMBER: North American Victorian Studies Association November 2-5 in Phoenix, AZ Midwest…

Test your knowledge in Bioethics!

Our recently published Bioethics in Context covers a wide range of topics, including: appropriate measures one should take to obtain informed consent and to protect patient privacy, dealing with patients who exhibit signs of mental illness, responding to sensitive cultural and religious concerns, and balancing the needs of medical researchers with those of patients participating…

Instructional Treatise from A Book for Governesses

The Half-Caste The following is an excerpt from Appendix C of our recently published The Half-Caste by Dinah Mulock Craik, edited by Melissa Edmundson. [volume editor’s note] The social and financial status of the Victorian governess was a topic of debate throughout the nineteenth century…Emily Peart’s A Book for Governesses (1868) provides an example of the many…

Why Write? An Excerpt from Nancy Pagh’s Write Moves

Write Moves [Nancy Pagh’s new creative writing guide (with readings) is shaped around the idea that creative writing exists to move us. In the excerpt below, from the chapter “Why Write?”, Pagh discusses some of the impulses and experiences that lead creative writers to put words on the page.] Language That Is Our Own Creative…

Hanging Together from Introducing Philosophy

The following excerpt is from our forthcoming Introducing Philosophy: Knowledge and Reality, which is written by Jack S. Crumley II. When a belief of ours fits with, or “hangs with,” other beliefs, we are no doubt inclined to give greater epistemic weight or credibility to that belief. It is not very difficult to see why.…

Ezra Pound on Dubliners

Our edition of Dubliners, edited by Keri Walsh, is now available! We’d like to share an excerpt from Appendix A of our new edition. For more information on the text, click here. From Ezra Pound, “Dubliners and Mr. James Joyce,” The Egoist (15 July 1914) Freedom from sloppiness is so rare in contemporary English prose…

Lenore Keeshig [Tobias], “Stop Stealing Native Stories”

The following is an excerpt from our recently published Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada, edited by Heather Macfarlane and Armand Garnet Ruffo. Lenore Keeshig [Tobias], Anishinaabekwe, was born on Neyaashiinigmiing (the Cape Croker Reserve) on the Saugeen Peninsula in Ontario. An Ojibway journalist, storyteller, poet, children’s author and activist, she is a founding…

Tekahionwake on Indigenous Representation in 19th C Fiction

Here is an excerpt from our appendices of the recently published Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson’s Writings on Native North America. A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl In Modern Fiction [In this essay, Johnson attacks dominant stereotype of the “Indian maiden” and argues that writers should try to find out about real Indigenous people, rather…

Professionalization within/beyond Academia

At the recent ACCUTE conference in Calgary, our English editor, Marjorie Mather, gave a talk about publishing as a career for graduate students.  A condensed version of her talk follows. I want to begin by saying that my comments on publishing are based on my own experience at Broadview Press, a single independent, Canadian, academic…