Books by Janet Todd
Mary Wollstonecraft
by Janet Todd
With Mary Wollstonecraft and her A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792, a modern female consciousness came clearly into being, one that tied the mind to the body. This beautifully written biography, the first new study of Mary Wollstonecraft in thirty years, argues that it is her life and letters that are her most lasting legacy.
Her story reads like a novel -- extraordinarily scandalous in conventional terms (a close involvement with a woman, two male lovers, an illegitimate child, and a habit of initiating amorous relationships), yet in her own terms always principled and highly moral. She strove to reconcile integrity and sexual desire, the duties and needs of a woman, motherhood and intellectual life, domesticity and fame.
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$25.95
Death and the Maiden: The Death of Fanny Wollstonecraft
by Janet Todd
Presents a biography of the little-known life of Fanny Wollstonecraft, the daughter of feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and sister of literary star Mary Shelley, whose own infatuation with Percy Bysshe Shelley took a backseat when her sister eloped with the poet and who tragically ended her life at the age of nineteen.
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A Man of Genius
by Janet Todd
Strange and haunting, a gothic novel with a modern consciousness.” Philippa Gregory
"A quirky, darkly mischievous novel about love, obsession and the burden of charisma, played out against the backdrop of Venice's watery, decadent glory." Sarah Dunant
A mesmerizing story of love and obsession in nineteenth century Venice: dark and utterly compelling."
Natasha Solomons
"Intriguing and entertaining; a clever, beguiling debut.Todd knows her Venice backwards."
Salley Vickers
Revealing, surprising, compelling, gripping.” Miriam Margolyes, actress
A Man of Genius portrays a psychological journey from safety into obsession and secrecy. It mirrors a physical passage from flamboyant Regency England through a Europe conquered by Napoleon.
Ann, a successful writer of cheap Gothic novels, becomes obsessed with Robert James, regarded by many, including himself, as a genius, with his ideas, his talk, and his band of male followers. However, their relationship becomes tortuous, as Robert descends into violence and madness.
The pair leaves London for occupied Venice, where Ann tries to cope with the monstrous ego of her lover. Forced to flee with a stranger, she delves into her past, to be jolted by a series of revelations--about her lover, her parentage, the stranger, and herself.
Janet Todd is known for her works about Mary Wollstonecraft, Aphra Behn, the Shelley circle, and Jane Austen. Born in Wales, her wandering childhood in the United Kingdom, Bermuda, and Sri Lanka led to work as an academic in Ghana, the United States, and United Kingdom. Her passion has been for women writers, the largely unknown and the famous. A former president of Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, she lives in Cambridge and Venice.
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Jane Austen's Sanditon: With an Essay by Janet Todd
Coming to PBS Masterpiece Classic soon! Gorgeous, profound, delightful, useful, original, this fully illustrated, informative volume combines Jane Austen's Sanditon novel and Janet Todd's ground-breaking essay.
“I so enjoyed Janet Todd's beautifully produced book.” Andrew Davies, screenwriter.
Sanditon is Jane Austen’s last novel, left unfinished when she died. A comedy, it continues the strain of burlesque and caricature she wrote as a teenager and in private throughout her life. This beautifully illustrated volume combines the full novel and Todd’s ground-breaking essay, where she contextualizes Austen’s life and work, Sanditon’s connection with Northanger Abbey (1818) and the Austen family’s speculation in England and the West Indies. She examines the moral and social problems of capitalism, entrepreneurship, and whether wealth trickles down to benefit the place it is made. In explaining the early nineteenth-century culture of self: the exploitation of hypochondria, health fads, seaside resorts, cures, she contends that Sanditon is an innovative, ebullient study of human beings’ vagaries - rather than using common sense, Sanditon’s characters follow intuition and bodily signs believing that desire can be translated into physical facts and speech can transform fantasy into reality. Todd shows Austen’s themes to be akin to contemporary concerns: the mistakes of the self-deluded reveal the inevitable, ridiculous gap between how we think of ourselves and how we appear and sound to others.
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The Cambridge Companion to 'Pride and Prejudice'
by Janet Todd
Named in many surveys as Britain's best-loved work of fiction, Pride and Prejudice is now a global brand, with film and television adaptations making Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy household names. With a combination of original readings and factual background information, this Companion investigates some of the sources of the novel's power. It explores key themes and topics in detail: money, land, characters and style. The history of the book's composition and first publication is set out, both in individual essays and in the section of chronology. Chapters on the critical reception, adaptations and cult of the novel reveal why it has become an enduing classic with a unique and timeless appeal.
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Aphra Behn: A Secret Life
by Janet Todd
The life, work and history of Aphra Behn: seventeenth century dramatist, poet of the erotic and bisexual, novelist, political propagandist, spy.
Praise for the first hardback edition:
Fascinating scholarship. Todd conveys Behn's vivacious character and the mores of the time.” the New York Times
Ground-breakingit reads quickly and lightly. Even Todd’s throwaway lines are steeped in learning and observation.” Ruth Perry, MIT, Women’s Review of Books
A major biography; of interest to everyone who cares about women as writers.” Times Higher Education Supplement
Fascinating, a page-turner and a delight, an astonishingly thorough book.” Emma Donoghue
All women together ought to let flowers fall on the tomb of Aphra Behn. . . . For it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” Virginia Woolf
Aphra Behn, a spy in the Netherlands and the Americas, was the first professional woman writer. The most prolific dramatist of her age, innovative novelist, translator, lyrical and erotic poet, she expresses a frank sexuality addressing impotence, orgasm and bisexuality, whilst serving as political propagandist for the monarch.
This revised biography of the extraordinary, ground-breaking writer, who is emblematic of the Restoration period, a time of masks and self-fashioning, is set in conflict-ridden England, Europe, and in the mismanaged slave colonies, following the Puritan republic in 1660.
Janet Todd, novelist and internationally renowned scholar, was President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and a Professor at Rutgers, NJ. An expert on women’s writing and feminism, she has published on many writers, including Jane Austen, the Shelley Circle, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Aphra Behn.
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