Valancourt Books
  • Home
  • About
    • Our History
    • Who We Are
    • Where to Buy
    • Contact
  • Catalogue
    • Gothic & Romantic
    • Victorian & Edwardian
    • Horror & Science Fiction
    • LGBT Literature
    • Literary Fiction
    • International Series
    • Vintage Thrills and Chills
    • audiobooks
  • Authors
  • Booksellers
  • Blog
Picture
The Story of Henrietta (1800)
Charlotte Smith, Edited by Janina Nordius

Originally published as the second volume in Charlotte Smith's five volume series of The Letters of a Solitary Wanderer in 1800, The Story of Henrietta follows its heroine as her happy life with her aunt and her beloved is quickly shattered by her tyrannical father's cruelty. Henrietta's father, a slaveholder in Jamaica, summons her to his plantation, where he plans to marry her off to a man she despises. But when she tries to escape, she will encounter other unexpected dangers, including capture by lascivious natives, a slave rebellion, and a hermit with a mysterious and tragic history! This edition reprints the unabridged text of the 1800 first edition with a new introduction and extensive annotations by Janina Nordius. 

"The novella-length Story of Henrietta is among Charlotte Smith's least known but most interesting works, for here Smith leaves the ruins and castles of Europe behind to make a significant foray into another, yet so far little explored field of gothic terror and brutality. Setting her story in the British colony of Jamaica, she expands her political concerns to embrace also the controversial issue of colonial slavery, a system supported by powerful financial interests in the metropolis but also increasingly criticized there by the growing abolitionist movement. In representing the slaveholding island as a location so fraught with horrors and anxieties as to chill the blood of the most seasoned gothic reader, Smith conjures up a parallel between women's disempowerment and the situation of the enslaved, while at the same time considerably radicalizing her critique of the West Indian slave regimes already begun in her short novel The Wanderings of Warwick (1794)." - From the Introduction by Janina Nordius


BOOK DETAILS
ISBN: 1934555541
ISBN-13: 978-1934555545
$16.99 US, 218 pp.
​Trade paper
Published 2012
Purchase paperback

ALSO AVAILABLE THROUGH ONLINE RETAILERS

BUY PAPERBACK
$16.99
​Amazon US

Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble


BUY EBOOK
$4.99

Kindle US
Kindle UK
Nook

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a new readership." 
- Times Literary Supplement

ABOUT US

Our History
What We Publish
Who We Are
Contact

OUR CATALOGUE

Literary Fiction
Horror & Science Fiction
Vintage Thrills and Chills
LGBT Interest
Gothic & Romantic
Victorian & Edwardian

​MORE INFO

Booksellers
Valancourt Books | PO Box 17642, Richmond, VA 23226 | 804.873.8528 | email
Copyright © 2022 by Valancourt Books, LLC. All rights reserved. Valancourt Books® is a registered trademark of Valancourt Books, LLC.
Banner art by M.S. Corley