Recovering Lost Voices: Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Drummey and George have assembled an extraordinarily broad and vivid collection of essays that promises to turn critical attention to “lost” literary works of the nineteenth century. Recovering Lost Voices celebrates the painstaking archival research and ethical vision of its authors and editors, and reminds us that recovery work, while never complete, will always offer new and surprising literary delights.

Dr. James Krasner

Professor, Department of English

College of Liberal Arts

University of New Hampshire

Like Michaela George and Elizabeth Drummey, I believe the work of recovering lost voices in nineteenth-century British literature is an iterative process and an example of scholarly labor as care work. This edited collection is a valuable contribution to the ongoing project of making marginalized writers more accessible in the digital flood that can threaten what Suzanne Keen has called “the romance of the archive.” Chapters on poet Alice Flowerdew, travel-writer Anne Jane Thornton, novelist Thomas Anstey Guthrie, playwright William Gorman Wills, artist Elizabeth Murray, detective-fiction author L.T. Meade, novelist and critic Julia Wedgwood, travel-writer Samuel White Baker, novelist George Payne Rainsford James, novelist Marie Corelli, and novelist Edith Johnstone offer wide-ranging examples of “re-recovery” in the twenty-first century.

Prof. Dr. Livia Arndal Woods

University of Illinois at Springfield