The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793)
Eliza Parsons
Edited by Diane Long Hoeveler
"No longer to be regarded as a footnote to the literary history of Jane Austen's Northanger septet, Eliza Parsons's Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) now secures its proper place as both a work of historical importance and a highly readable Gothic novel in its own right with this fine edition. Diane Long Hoeveler's thoughtful introduction opens new perspectives on Parsons's achievement in the field of what might be called “international” Gothic in her creation of an “ideologically bifurcated female Gothic, part liberal and part conservative” in its political outlook. This new edition both supplants earlier editions of this pivotal Gothic and tells us much about how the Gothic novel evolved in the late 1790s as an historical reflector of the fears, beliefs, and prejudices of a revolutionary, yet reactionary, era."
-- Frederick S. Frank, Professor Emeritus of English, Allegheny College, and author of The First Gothics.
Matilda Weimar flees her lecherous and incestuous uncle and seeks refuge in the ancient Castle of Wolfenbach. Among the castle's abandoned chambers, Matilda will discover the horrifying mystery of the missing Countess of Wolfenbach. But when her uncle tracks her down, can she escape his despicable intentions?
One of the seven "horrid novels" named in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, The Castle of Wolfenbach is perhaps the most important of the early Gothic novels, predating both The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk.
This edition reprints the complete text of the 1793 edition and includes a new introduction by Diane Long Hoeveler, one of the foremost modern scholars of Gothic literature and feminism.
5.5" x 8.5" trade paperback, September 2006, 228 pp.
About the Author
Eliza Parsons (1739-1811) was one of the most prolific and popular novelists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She is chiefly remembered today as the author of two of the "horrid novels" named in Northanger Abbey: The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and The Mysterious Warning (1796), although she also authored a number of other popular novels, including The Valley of St. Gothard (1799), Women as They Are (1797), and Anecdotes of Well-Known Families (1798). Often derided by both contemporary and modern critics, Parsons's gothic novels nonetheless remain significant to any student of the gothic novel.
About the Editor
Diane Long Hoeveler is Professor of English at Marquette University, where she teaches courses in Romantic literature, women's studies, and the Gothic novel. She is the author of Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës and Romantic Androgyny: The Women Within and is currently at work on an edition of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe for Broadview Press.
