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The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen House
Aberystwyth University
The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen House. Edited by Jennie Batchelor and Megan Hiatt. Pckering & Chatto, 2006. ISBN 1851968601. £45; Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis, Adelaide and Theodore. Edited by Gillian Dow. Pickering and Chatto, 2007. ISBN 1851968725. £60
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CHAWTON HOUSE library is acknowledged as an invaluable resource for those with an interest in early women's writing in English. Containing a significant collection of works written in the period 1600–1830, it is the repository for many extremely rare works. Perhaps through lack of exposure, many of these texts have not always received the acknowledgement and academic attention that they deserve. This belies the influence and significance that they had on their contemporaries, a circumstance that Jennie Batchelor, Megan Hiatt, and Gillian Dow seek to redress in these newly re-set editions of two much neglected eighteenth-century novels, The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen House (1760) and Adelaide and Theodore (1782). The editors' thorough referencing of contextual debates and works elucidate just how influential the texts were in their time. These two novels form part of a joint project between the library and the publishers, Pickering