A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity

A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity PDF Author: Kathleen Gilles Seidel
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429919167
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
"Her daughter enjoyed a most uncommon degree of popularity." –Emma, Jane Austen Your own daughter. . . one of the popular girls? On the first day of middle school, Lydia Meadows, a former lawyer turned full-time mother, is startled to discover that her daughter Erin is one of the popular girls, a tight foursome whose mothers are also great friends. Lydia has always thought of popular girls as ambitious little manipulators who enjoy being cruel. But Erin is kind and well-adjusted. Maybe this popularity thing won't be so bad after all. Then a new student ruthlessly targets Erin to boost her own popularity, and Lydia helplessly wonders what to do when her daughter's phone stops ringing. And the uneasiness among the girls begins to affect the friendship of the mothers—even though they are all grown women who should know better. Has their driven energy, once directed toward their careers, turned into an obsession with the social lives of their daughters? A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity is a delightful novel of manners, an unabashed chronicle of the rules, rituals, and pitfalls of raising a daughter.

A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity

A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity PDF Author: Kathleen Gilles Seidel
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429919167
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book

Book Description
"Her daughter enjoyed a most uncommon degree of popularity." –Emma, Jane Austen Your own daughter. . . one of the popular girls? On the first day of middle school, Lydia Meadows, a former lawyer turned full-time mother, is startled to discover that her daughter Erin is one of the popular girls, a tight foursome whose mothers are also great friends. Lydia has always thought of popular girls as ambitious little manipulators who enjoy being cruel. But Erin is kind and well-adjusted. Maybe this popularity thing won't be so bad after all. Then a new student ruthlessly targets Erin to boost her own popularity, and Lydia helplessly wonders what to do when her daughter's phone stops ringing. And the uneasiness among the girls begins to affect the friendship of the mothers—even though they are all grown women who should know better. Has their driven energy, once directed toward their careers, turned into an obsession with the social lives of their daughters? A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity is a delightful novel of manners, an unabashed chronicle of the rules, rituals, and pitfalls of raising a daughter.

Why Do We Care about Literary Characters?

Why Do We Care about Literary Characters? PDF Author: Blakey Vermeule
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421403102
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Blakey Vermeule wonders how readers become involved in the lives of fictional characters, people they know do not exist. Vermeule examines the ways in which readers’ experiences of literature are affected by the emotional attachments they form to fictional characters and how those experiences then influence their social relationships in real life. She focuses on a range of topics, from intimate articulations of sexual desire, gender identity, ambition, and rivalry to larger issues brought on by rapid historical and economic change. Vermeule discusses the phenomenon of emotional attachment to literary characters primarily in terms of 18th-century British fiction but also considers the postmodern work of Thomas Mann, J. M. Coetzee, Ian McEwan, and Chinua Achebe. From the perspective of cognitive science, Vermeule finds that caring about literary characters is not all that different from caring about other people, especially strangers. The tools used by literary authors to sharpen and focus reader interest tap into evolved neural mechanisms that trigger a caring response. This book contributes to the emerging field of evolutionary literary criticism. Vermeule draws upon recent research in cognitive science to understand the mental processes underlying human social interactions without sacrificing solid literary criticism. People interested in literary theory, in cognitive analyses of the arts, and in Darwinian approaches to human culture will find much to ponder in Why Do We Care about Literary Characters?

Emma and the Vampires

Emma and the Vampires PDF Author: Wayne Josephson
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402256205
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
What better place than pale England to hide a secret society of gentlemen vampires? In this hilarious retelling of Jane Austen's Emma, screenwriter Wayne Josephson casts Mr. Knightley as one of the most handsome and noble of the gentlemen village vampires. Blithely unaware of their presence, Emma, who imagines she has a special gift for matchmaking, attempts to arrange the affairs of her social circle with delightfully disastrous results. But when her dear friend Harriet Smith declares her love for Mr. Knightley, Emma realizes she's the one who wants to stay up all night with him. Fortunately, Mr. Knightley has been hiding a secret deep within his unbeating heart—his (literal) undying love for her... A brilliant mash-up of Jane Austen and the undead.

Frail Vessels

Frail Vessels PDF Author: Hazel Mews
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472514750
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
The years between the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and of John Stuart Mill's essay On the Subjection of Women (1869) – a crucial phase in the emancipation movement – also saw the emergence of England's greatest women writers, whose response to the flux of new ideas as revealed in many outstanding works of fiction Dr Mews here examines. The central chapters of the book take the form of a perceptive and humane analysis of the way in which the greater women novelists conceived the role of women, on the one hand as young girls, wives and mothers, on the other as individuals standing alone in spinsterhood, as teachers or artists. The writers examined in detail are Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot. Such a comprehensive study has not been attempted before. It throws light not only on the novel and the novelist in society but also on the transmutation of deeply felt experience into creative work.

Mothering Daughters

Mothering Daughters PDF Author: Susan C. Greenfield
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814338283
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The rise of the novel and of the ideal nuclear family was no mere coincidence, argues Susan C. Greenfield in this fascinating look at the construction of modern maternity.

Unbounded Attachment

Unbounded Attachment PDF Author: Harriet Guest
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199686815
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This title discusses a range of British women writers, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Jane Austen, and considers the political implications of the language of feeling they use in their work.

Her Bread To Earn

Her Bread To Earn PDF Author: Mona Scheuermann
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813159571
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Much criticism has posited an all-powerful patriarchy that effectively marginalized and disempowered women until well into the nineteenth century. In a startling revisionist study, Mona Scheuermann refutes these stereotypes, finding that the images presented by eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novelists are of functioning, capable women whose involvement with the getting, keeping, and investing of money provides a ubiquitous theme in the novels of the period. Her Bread to Earn focuses on the images presented by the major novels of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, those works that form the core of the canon or that define an important trend at a particular time. Moving through Defoe through Richardson, Fielding, Holcroft, Godwin, Bage, Inchbald, and Wollstonescaft to Austen, Scheuermann demonstrates that novelists of this period depicted women as relatively independent persons, many of whom managed property, shaped and directed events, and controlled their own destinies. These are intelligent women, eager to learn, and ready, sometimes aggressively ready, to act. Scheuermann's eighteenth-century women is drawn in the grays of reality, not in the black and white of ideology. The images she presents go far beyond the patriarchal prison into which modern criticism has sometimes forced the female characters. Certain to spark controversy, this book marks a major shift in received opinion.

Women's Fiction

Women's Fiction PDF Author: Rebecca Vnuk
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Offering a fresh perspective on women's fiction for a broad reading audience—fans as well as librarians—this book defines and maps the genre, and describes hundreds of relevant titles. Women's Fiction: A Guide to Popular Reading Interests celebrates the books in this broad genre—titles that explore the lives of female protagonists, with a focus on their relationships with family, friends, and lovers. After a brief introductory history and a chapter that defines the characteristics of women's fiction, the author showcases annotations and suggestions of approximately 300 titles by more than 100 authors. She explains how women's fiction differs from romance fiction, enabling readers to appreciate this rich body of literature that encompasses titles as diverse as Meg Cabot's lighthearted chick lit to the more serious novels of Elizabeth Berg and Maeve Binchy. The book identifies some of the most popular and enduring women's fiction authors and titles, and provides invaluable reading lists and readalike suggestions that will be appreciated by both librarians and general readers.

The Novels of Jane Austen: Emma

The Novels of Jane Austen: Emma PDF Author: Jane Austen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description


Novels: Emma

Novels: Emma PDF Author: Jane Austen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description