Robinson Crusoe is one of the most famous literary characters in history, and his story has spawned hundreds of retellings. Inspired by the life of Alexander Selkirk, a sailor who lived for several years on a Pacific island, the novel tells the story of Crusoe’s survival after shipwreck on an island, interaction with the mainland’s native inhabitants, and eventual rescue. Read variously as economic fable, religious allegory, or imperialist fantasy, Crusoe has never lost its appeal as one of the most compelling adventure stories of all time. In addition to an introduction and helpful notes, this Broadview Edition includes a wide range of appendices that situate Defoe’s 1719 novel amidst castaway narratives, economic treatises, reports of cannibalism, explorations of solitude, and Defoe’s own writings on slavery and the African trade. A final appendix presents images of Crusoe’s rescue of Friday from a dozen of the most significant illustrated editions of the novel published between 1719 and 1920.

Robinson Crusoe (Broadview Editions)

DEFOE, DANIEL

Children's Books

Broadview Press

Hannah Webster Foster based The Coquette on the true story of Elizabeth Whitman, an unmarried woman who died in childbirth in New England. Fictionalizing Whitman’s experiences in her heroine, Eliza Wharton, Foster created a compelling narrative of seduction that was hugely successful with readers. The Boarding School, a less widely known work by Foster, is an experimental text, part epistolary novel and part conduct book. Together, the novels explore the realities of women’s lives in early America. The critical introduction and appendices to this edition, which explore female friendship and the education of women in the novels, frame Foster as more than a purveyor of the sentimental novel, and re-evaluate her placement in American literary history.

The Coquette and the Boarding School (Broadview Editions)

Literature & Fiction

Foster, Hannah Webster

United States

First published in 1886 as a “shilling shocker,” Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde takes the basic struggle between good and evil and adds to the mix bourgeois respectability, urban violence, and class conflict. The result is a tale that has taken on the force of myth in the popular imagination. This Broadview edition provides a fascinating selection of contextual material, including contemporary reviews of the novel, Stevenson’s essay “A Chapter on Dreams,” and excerpts from the 1887 stage version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Also included are historical documents on criminality and degeneracy, the “Jack the Ripper” murders, the “double brain,” and London in the 1880s. New to this third edition are an appendix on the figure of the Victorian gentleman and an expanded selection of letters related to the novel; the introduction and bibliography have also been updated to reflect recent criticism.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Third Edition

Stevenson, Robert Louis

Literary

Regarded by Bernard Shaw as a master of the theatre, Dion Boucicault was arguably the most important figure in drama in North America and in Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century. He was largely forgotten during the twentieth century―though he continued to influence popular culture (the iconic image of a woman tied to railway tracks as a train rushes towards her, for example, originates in a Boucicault melodrama). In the twenty-first century the gripping nature of his plays is being discovered afresh; when The Octoroon was produced as a BBC Radio play in 2012, director and playwright Mark Ravenhill described Boucicault’s dramas as “the precursors to Hollywood cinema.” In The Octoroon―the most controversial play of his career―Boucicault addresses the sensitive topic of race and slavery. George Peyton inherits a plantation, and falls in love with an octoroon―a person one-eighth African American, and thus, in 1859 Louisiana, legally a slave. The Octoroon opened in 1859 in New York City, just two years prior to the American Civil War, and created a sensation―as it did in its subsequent British production. This new edition includes a wide range of background contextual materials, an informative introduction, and extensive annotation.

The Octoroon: The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Edition (Broadview Editions)

Boucicault, Dion

Dramas & Plays

Israel Zangwill, an Anglo-Jewish author and son of immigrants, wrote The Melting-Pot to demonstrate how immigrants could become good American citizens, hoping to forestall the kinds of restrictions―particularly against Russian Jews―that had been enacted in his home country. In 1908, when the play first appeared on an American stage, many Americans feared that these particular newcomers would unalterably change the nation’s character. Politicians and others called for restricted immigration and stringent tests for citizenship. The Melting-Pot did not prevent the US government from enacting immigration restrictions in 1924, but it became Zangwill’s most popular and most continuously performed play, and it popularized a metaphor for America―the melting pot―that has been discussed and debated ever since. This edition presents the play in its historical context, with readings from the time on immigration and intermarriage, as well as the settlement house movement and the Kishinev pogrom, which both figure prominently in the drama. Excerpts from the many and diverse reviews of the play highlight why it was so controversial.

The Melting-Pot

Zangwill, Israel

This first-year composition rhetoric-reader uses a Writing about Writing (WAW) approach and a conversational style to help students engage in threshold concepts and transfer what they know about writing to new situations. Each chapter asks a key question such as “Why Write?” or “What Is the Rhetorical Situation and Why Should I Care about It?” Preliminary answers to the chapter question are provided in accessible prose, and these initial ideas are supplemented with a selection of three or four readings and a list of recommended online texts. Prompts for informal and formal writing projects keep the focus on writing and help students apply writing studies scholarship to their own lives in meaningful ways. A companion website includes recommended WAW resources, assignment supports, and links to additional readings: sites.broadviewpress.com/focusonwriting

Focus on Writing: What College Students Want to Know

Reference

McMillan, Laurie

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

Straightforward, practical, and focused on realistic examples, Business and Professional Writing: A Basic Guide is an introduction to the fundamentals of professional writing. The book emphasizes clarity, conciseness, and plain language. Guidelines and templates for business correspondence, formal and informal reports, brochures and press releases, and oral presentations are included. Exercises guide readers through the process of creating and revising each genre, and helpful tips, reminders, and suggested resources beyond the book are provided throughout. The second edition includes new sections on information security and ethics in business writing. New formal proposal examples have been added, and the text has been updated throughout.

Business and Professional Writing: A Basic Guide - Second Edition

MacRae, Paul

Business and Professional Writing: A Basic Guide - Second Canadian Edition

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