Selena by Mary Tighe

by Harriet Kramer Linkin (Editor)

Mary Tighe's unpublished novel Selena is one of the great unknown treasures of British Romanticism. Completed in 1803, this brilliant, compulsively readable, beautifully written, and psychologically astute courtship novel is finally available in a scholarly edition that reveals Mary Tighe to have been as talented a fiction writer as she was a poet. The history of this amazing work's long journey from manuscript to print is only one of the stories Harriet Kramer Linkin recounts in this scrupulously annotated edition based on the only known copy of the manuscript, currently part of the National Library of Ireland's holdings. Linkin's introduction situates the novel in its historical context, draws attention to significant aspects of the plots and characters, and makes a strong case for Selena's importance for understanding the history of the novel, fiction by women, Anglo-Irish fiction, silver-fork novels, and the Romantic period. Explanatory notes explain obscure references and contexts, identify allusions to other writers, and provide translations of any non-English or archaic words. Selena itself is a revelation in its frank treatment of the darker aspects of Tighe's world, including parents who mistreat, cheat, or fail their children and spouses who commit adultery or betray one another emotionally. At the same time, it is magnificent in its stunning and moving portrayals of romantic love, of the possibility and importance of female friendship, of the difficult necessity of choosing sense over sensibility, and of the need for women and men to choose self-enhancing vocations. This extraordinary novel is destined to open up new ways of thinking by scholars of the Romantic era and the history of the novel.

764 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Harriet Kramer Linkin received her B.A. in English summa cum laude from Queens College, City University of New York in 1979, her M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan in 1981, and her Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan in 1985.

Since the early 1990s her research has focused on the work of Romantic-era women poets, with particular emphasis on the poetry of Mary Tighe (1772-1810), once best known for her influence on Keats but now recognized as a major Romantic-era writer. She has co-edited two essay collections that speak to the value of reading and teaching the writings of once-neglected or forgotten Romantic-era women poets, Approaches to Teaching Women Poets of the British Romantic Period (MLA, 1997) and Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception (Kentucky, 1999); the first scholarly edition of Tighe’s poetry and journals, The Collected Poems and Journals of Mary Tighe (Kentucky, 2005); the first print edition of Tighe’s manuscript novel “Selena,” Selena by Mary Tighe: A Scholarly Edition (Ashgate, 2012); and the first edition of Tighe’s two-volume 1805 manuscript collection of original poems and illustrations, Mary Tighe’s Verses Transcribed for H.T.: An Electronic Edition (Romantic Circles, 2015). In addition to Dr. Linkin’s work on Tighe and other Romantic-era women poets, her publications explore women’s literary history, how we are teaching Romanticism, feminist readings of canonical Romantic poets (especially Blake), and feminist approaches to nineteenth- and twentieth-century women writers, gender and language theory, and stylistics.