While narrative fracturing, multiplicity, and experimentalism are commonly associated with modernist and postmodern texts, they have largely been understudied in Victorian literature. Narrative Bonds: Multiple Narrators in the Victorian Novel focuses on the centrality of these elements and address the proliferation of multiple narrators in Victorian novels. In Narrative Bonds, Alexandra Valint explores the ways in which the Victorian multi-narrator form moves toward the unity of vision across characters and provides inclusivity in an era of expanding democratic rights and a growing middle class. Integrating narrative theory, gothic theory, and disability studies with analyses of works by Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, Emily Brontë, and Bram Stoker, this comprehensive and illuminating study illustrates the significance and impact of the multi-narrator structure in Victorian novels.

Possibly the first novel written by a black woman slave, this work is both a historically important literary event and a gripping autobiographical story in its own right. When her master is betrothed to a woman who conceals a tragic secret, Hannah Crafts, a young slave on a wealthy North Carolina plantation, runs away in a bid for her freedom up North. Pursued by slave hunters, imprisoned by a mysterious and cruel captor, held by sympathetic strangers, and forced to serve a demanding new mistress, she finally makes her way to freedom in New Jersey. Her compelling story provides a fascinating view of American life in the mid-1800s and the literary conventions of the time. Written in the 1850's by a runaway slave, THE BONDSWOMAN'S NARRATIVE is a provocative literary landmark and a significant historical event that will captivate a diverse audience.

A young pilot risks everything to save his best friend—the man he trusts most and might even love—only to learn that his friend is secretly the heir to a brutal galactic empire. “An exciting space opera full of action and adventure that explores the bonds of loyalty and love, and what happens when they are stretched to their limits.”—Rebecca Roanhorse, Nebula and Hugo award–winning author of Trail of Lightning Ettian’s life was shattered when the merciless Umber Empire invaded his world. He’s spent seven years putting himself back together under its rule, joining an Umber military academy and becoming the best pilot in his class. Even better, he’s met Gal—his exasperating and infuriatingly enticing roommate who’s made the academy feel like a new home. But when dozens of classmates spring an assassination plot on Gal, a devastating secret comes to light: Gal is the heir to the Umber Empire. Ettian barely manages to save his best friend and flee the compromised academy unscathed, rattled that Gal stands to inherit the empire that broke him, and that there are still people willing to fight back against Umber rule. As they piece together a way to deliver Gal safely to his throne, Ettian finds himself torn in half by an impossible choice. Does he save the man who’s won his heart and trust that Gal’s goodness could transform the empire? Or does he throw his lot in with the brewing rebellion and fight to take back what’s rightfully theirs? Praise for Bonds of Brass “Skrutskie’s Bonds of Brass is a high-octane galactic adventure replete with heart, drama, and a keen edge of pain.”—Caitlin Starling, author of The Luminous Dead “Full of breathless action and dazzling characters, Bonds of Brass is space opera at its most exciting.”—Adam Christopher, author of Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town

This stylistic study of consciousness in the Modernist novel explores shifts across different viewpoints and the techniques through which they are dialogically interconnected. The dialogic resonances in the presentation of character consciousness are analysed using linguistic evidence and evidence drawn from everyday conversational practices.

The rich programme of ICIDS 2009, comprising invited talks, technical pres- tations and posters, demonstrations, and co-located post-conference workshops clearly underscores the event’s status as premier international meeting in the domain. It thereby con?rms the decision taken by the Constituting Committee of the conference series to take the step forward: out of the national cocoons of its precursors, ICVS and TIDSE, and towards an itinerant platform re?ecting its global constituency. This move re?ects the desire and the will to take on the challenge to stay on the lookout, critically re?ect upon and integrate views and ideas,?ndingsandexperiences,andtopromoteinterdisciplinaryexchange,while ensuring overall coherence and maintaining a sense of direction. This is a signi?cant enterprise: The challenges sought are multifarious and must be addressed consistently at all levels. The desire to involve all research communitiesandstakeholdersmustbematchedbyacknowledgingthedi?erences in established practises and by providing suitable means of guidance and int- duction, exposition and direct interaction at the event itself and of lasting (and increasingly:living) documentation, of which the present proceedings are but an important part.

What is lesbian literature? Must it contain overtly lesbian characters, and portray them in a positive light? Must the author be overtly (or covertly) lesbian? Does there have to be a lesbian theme and must it be politically acceptable? Marilyn Farwell here examines the work of such writers as Adrienne Rich, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jeanette Winterson, Gloria Naylor, and Marilyn Hacker to address these questions. Dividing their writings into two genres--the romantic story and the heroic, or quest, story, Farwell addresses some of the most problematic issues at the intersection of literature, sex, gender, and postmodernism. Illustrating how the generational conflict between the lesbian- feminists of twenty years ago and the queer theorists of today stokes the critical fires of contemporary lesbian and literary theory, Heterosexual Plots and Lesbian Narratives concludes by arguing for a broad and generous definition of lesbian writing.

A decade before the American Civil War, James Churchwill Vaughan (1828–1893) set out to fulfill his formerly enslaved father's dying wish that he should leave America to start a new life in Africa. Over the next forty years, Vaughan was taken captive, fought in African wars, built and rebuilt a livelihood, and led a revolt against white racism, finally becoming a successful merchant and the founder of a wealthy, educated, and politically active family. Tracing Vaughan's journey from South Carolina to Liberia to several parts of Yorubaland (present-day southwestern Nigeria), Lisa Lindsay documents this "free" man's struggle to find economic and political autonomy in an era when freedom was not clear and unhindered anywhere for people of African descent. In a tour de force of historical investigation on two continents, Lindsay tells a story of Vaughan's survival, prosperity, and activism against a seemingly endless series of obstacles. By following Vaughan's transatlantic journeys and comparing his experiences to those of his parents, contemporaries, and descendants in Nigeria and South Carolina, Lindsay reveals the expansive reach of slavery, the ambiguities of freedom, and the surprising ways that Africa, rather than America, offered new opportunities for people of African descent.