New Publications

Editing The Great Irish Famine

[Karen Sonnelitter reflects upon her experience editing her book in the Broadview Sources Series, The Great Irish Famine.] The greatest challenge of producing an edited primary source collection on the Irish Potato Famine is choosing what to include. The Famine is perhaps the most well-studied topic in Irish history, and reducing it to a brief introduction…

On Still Learning to Write

[Laurie McMillan, author of Focus on Writing shares her thoughts on the process of learning to write.] One of my healthiest coping mechanisms is my ability to laugh at myself. I had plenty of occasion to do so as I worked on Focus on Writing: What College Students Want to Know for Broadview Press. This composition textbook…

Quest of the Holy Grail and Medieval Manuscripts

[Judith Shoaf, editor of our new edition of Quest of the Holy Grail, shares some tips from her experience finding medieval manuscripts online and incorporating images into her new Broadview Edition.] In researching this translation of the Old French Quest of the Holy Grail, I had the luxury of being able to consult, from the comfort of…

On The Piazza Tales and Its Literary Contemporaries

[Brian Yothers, editor of our new edition of Melville’s Piazza Tales shares his thoughts on reading the stories in their literary contexts.] We often read “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Herman Melville’s most famous short story, as if it is detached from the literary history of its time. One of Melville’s earliest reviewers, however, noted important connections among…

The New Face of Broadview’s Jane Austen

We imagine that you would be hard pressed to find a university campus in North America where Jane Austen is not taught. Indeed, the Broadview editions that we offer of her novels are among the most popular books that we publish. Because our Austen editions were published over a wide span of years, the covers―while…

R. v. Machekequonabe – From Canadian Cases in the Philosophy of Law

What follows is a case from the fifth edition of Canadian Cases in the Philosophy of Law. This new edition includes many contemporary and historical cases, making it easy for students to compare historical court decisions such as the below to those from the present day. R. v. Machekequonabe Ontario Court of Appeal (1897) 28 O.R. 309…

Editing Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy

[Koritha Mitchell, editor of our new edition of Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy, shares her thoughts on editing the text.] I have taught Iola Leroy almost every year since I joined the faculty at Ohio State University twelve years ago, so when I finally decided to prepare a scholarly edition of it, I was…

Reflections on Philosophy and Math

Eric Steinhart, author of More Precisely: The Math You Need to Do Philosophy, shares his thoughts on the new edition of his book, and the practice of using math in philosophy. Philosophers are increasingly using mathematical tools to make their arguments and to construct their theories. Analytic philosophers have long used mathematics, but recently philosophers usually…

A Toast to a New Stamp Act Sourcebook

What better way to celebrate a victory than with a series of toasts. A group calling themselves the Sons of Liberty did just that on the occasion of the repeal of the Stamp Act. This document is included in Jonathan Mercantini’s newly published The Stamp Act of 1765, the second title to appear in the…

“avowedly a literary orgie:” A Contemporary Review of A Marriage Below Zero

The following is a review of A Marriage Below Zero published in Belford’s Magazine in June of 1889 upon the novel’s first publication. This review, among others, is featured in our new edition of A Marriage Below Zero, edited by Richard A. Kaye. In producing this book the writer, who wisely conceals his identity under an evident pseudonym, has touched…

The Socialist Circle of 1880’s London: Engels on A City Girl

The following is an excerpt from Appendix A of our recently published edition of Margaret Harkness’s A City Girl, in which Friedrich Engels responds to the novel. [The following letter from Friedrich Engels (1820–95) to Harkness about A City Girl has perhaps generated more concentrated attention from critics than the novel itself. Engels, the German-born philosopher…

On Editing Mary Shelley’s Mathilda

[Michelle Faubert, editor of our new edition of Mary Shelley’s Mathilda, shares her thoughts on editing the text.] Editing Mary Shelley’s Mathilda (1819; first published 1959) for Broadview Press has been hugely exciting for me, not least because I transcribed it from the manuscript. In 1959, Elizabeth Nitchie first transcribed Mathilda for publication from a…

Pedagogy and International Students

I thought I would write this week about the extraordinary growth over the past generation in the number of international students attending North American universities, the pedagogical challenges this growth has presented—and about one aspect of the latest edition of our Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose that represents a response to these challenges. Thirty years ago EAL*…

The Evolution of the Writing Handbook

Broadview’s most successful book thus far this year is the sixth edition of our Broadview Guide to Writing. It’s a success that I’m sure has come in large part as a result of They Say / I Say authors Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s comment on the latest edition: “Even the most useful reference guides…

Charlotte Smith’s “tender and exquisite effusions”

[To celebrate the recent publication of our new edition of Charlotte Smith: Major Poetic Works, we are sharing an excerpt from a review included in the appendices of the new edition. This glowing review was published in Gentlemen’s Magazine in April of 1786, in response to Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets.] It has been suggested by a…

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…

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…

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…

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

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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…

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…