Literary annuals played a major role in the popular culture of nineteenth-century Britain and America, and The Keepsake was the most distinguished, successful, and enduring of them all. The 1829 edition was stellar, with contributions by William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walter Scott, Letitia Landon, Felicia Hemans, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The whole of The Keepsake for 1829 is reproduced here in facsimile, so readers can experience it as it was first published, with the text adorned by the original illustrations. An in-depth introduction by Paula R. Feldman contextualizes the volume for modern readers.

The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories beautifully demonstrates the astonishing variety and ingenuity of Victorian short stories. This collection brings together works focused on a wide range of popular Victorian subjects in many different styles and forms (including comic, gothic, fantasy, adventure, and colonial works; science fiction; children’s tales; New Woman writing; Irish yarns; stories originally published in popular periodicals; and travel stories). Both well-known and lesser-known authors are included, and both men and women are well represented. This anthology includes twenty-six annotated stories, a general introduction that discusses the history of the genre’s development in relation to key socio-political issues of the Victorian era, and suggestions for secondary readings. It also includes an intriguing selection of Victorian writings on the genre by Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Frederick Wedmore, and Laura Marholm Hansson.

The novels in this collection present a vivid picture of late-Regency society clinging to modes of behaviour which soon became obsolete and mark an important point of transition to Victorian cultural values.