Poe and Women presents essays by scholars who investigate the various ways in which women--Poe's female contemporaries, critics, writers, and artists, as well as women characters in Poe adaptations--have shaped Edgar Allan Poe's reputation and revised his depictions of gender.

Controversies abound in studies of Edgar Allan Poe. From the time of his death well into the twentieth century, partisans debated the issue of his character: was he an alcoholic? drug addict? pathological liar? necrophile? In the 1920s and 30s, psychoanalytic critics sought to divorce the study of Poe from Victorian moral concerns but in the process made scandalous claims by linking Poe's dream-like stories to his personality. The status of Poe's literary productions was similarly disputed; dismissed by the New Critics but championed by poets such as William Carlos Williams and Allen Tate. Recent scholars have debated the meaning and significance of Poe's representations of race, class, and gender, often returning to the character issue: how racist and misogynist was he, and how important are those questions to understanding his work? Finally, how have the seemingly countless plays, films, novels, comic books, and pop music experiments based on his image and works intertwined with academic study of Poe? This book examines these and other controversies, shedding light on broader issues of canon formation, the role of biography in literary study, and the importance of integrating various, even conflicting interpretations into one's own reading of a literary work. This book will be of great interest to Poe scholars, both those who have been a part of the literary battles described above and newcomers to the field who can use the book as a guide to the field of Poe studies, and to all those interested in Poe and his work. Scott Peeples is associate professor of English at the College of Charleston.

Victorian Women's Travel Writing on Meiji Japan: Hospitable Friendship examines forgotten stories of cross-cultural friendship and intimacy between Victorian female travel writers and Meiji Japanese. Drawing on unpublished primary sources and contemporary Japanese literature hithero untranslated into English it highlights the open subjectivity and addective relationality of Isabella Bird, Mary Crawford Fraser, and Marie Stopes in their interactions with Japanese hosts. Victorian Women's Travel Writing on Meiji Japan demonstates how travel narratives and literary works about non-colonial Japan complicate and challenge Oriental stereotypes and imperial binaries. It traces the shifts in the representation of Japan in Victorian discourse from obsequious mousmé to virile samurai alongside transitions in the Anglo-Japanese bilateral relationship and global geopolitical events. Considering the ethical and political implications of how Victorian women wrote about their Japanese friends, it examines how female travellers created counter discourses. It charts the unexplored terrain of female interracial and cross-cultural friendship and love in Victorian literature, emphasizing the agency of female travellers against the scholarly tendency to depoliticize their literary praxis. It also offers parallel narratives of three Meiji women in Britain - Tsuda Umeko, Yasui Tetsu, and Yosano Akiko -and transnational feminist alliance. The book is a celebration of the political possibility of female friendship and literature, and a reminder of the ethical responsibility of representing racial and cultural others.

A unique, two-volume study that examines female crime and the women who commit it. The two-volume Women Criminals: An Encyclopedia of People and Issues addresses both key topics and key figures in women's crime. The first volume provides topical essays about areas critical to the understanding of female criminals, such as the definition of women's crime, explanations of women's criminality, ethnic and age diversity in female criminals, and responses of the criminal justice system. The second volume comprises biographical entries profiling women who are obviously criminals, such as Aileen Wuornos and Myra Hindley, and also women who were victims of circumstance, unjust laws, or narrowly applied definitions of crime, such as Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and Sophie Scholl. In addition to highlighting the breadth of women's criminality, these portraits provide a holistic, multifaceted understanding of the dynamics of women's crime and why it occurs, connecting the individual stories to the larger social-scientific perspectives. Care has been taken to include the women's own voices and perspectives where possible and to address the intentions and reasoning of the system that responded to their criminality.

As the first and only book in any language on contemporary women’s movements in Hungary, this groundbreaking study focuses on the role of women’s activism in a society where women are not yet adequately represented by established parties and political institutions. Drawing on eyewitness accounts of meetings and protests, as well as first-person interviews with leading female activists, Katalin Fábián examines the interactions between women’s groups in Hungary and studies the unique brand of democracy they have forged in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Through her analysis, she demonstrates how democratization and globalization—with their attendant range of challenges and opportunities—have led women to redefine public-private divides.

An old-fashioned mystery, a contemporary mystery, and an avant-garde mystery are presented in Three Plots for Poe. This sequence is a tribute to the Gothic genius of Poe who shaped the mystery genre. At the same time, these tales explore three phases of the genres progress and at last escape its Gothic limits altogether. An old-fashioned mystery, Death Calls the Shots invokes the golden age of pulp mysteries in a way that led Jacques Barzun, one of the ultimate authorities on this era, to express his admiration of the story for its mood, plot, pace, and structure. A contemporary mystery,Love in the Modern Landscape offers an unusual blend of evil and intelligence endangering a pair of lovers who appear unequal to the threat. An avantgarde mystery, Still No Ice at the Fish Market opens with a pair of bangsa bomb exploding in the midst of lovemakingand ends up as one of the most unusual literary experiments in many years. Two alternating narrators in this story capture the extremes of classic clarity and Gothic chaos, wit and weirdness, as they hand the story to each other from one chapter to the next until the final chapter blends their separate styles. In all three novels, passionate love affairs become more powerful than evil in competing for the center of the story. As the genius who rules these Gothic games, the ghost of Poe is exorcised at last.