Reviewed by:

• Julia and the Illuminated Baron ed. by Sally Sayward Barrell Keating Wood Richard S. Pressman
• Gretchen Murphy (bio)

Early American Reprints, the not-for-profit publisher founded by Richard S. Pressman, has released an edition of Julia and the Illuminated Baron by Sally Sayward Barrell Keating Wood. Originally published [End Page 798] in 1800, Julia and the Illuminated Baron was Wood's first novel and the first gothic novel written by a woman in the United States. It takes place in France before the French Revolution and tells the story of Julia, a virtuous heroine of unknown lineage who is ensnared by one of the Illuminati, a libertine Baron who imprisons her in his dark castle filled with secrets, including that of her true identity. Expressly written to address secularism and anarchy associated with the French Revolution, the novel thus conveyed the deepest fears of Wood's Federalist and Congregationalist New England.

Julia and the Illuminated Baron was out of print for over two hundred years, until 2012, when it was rereleased as part of the Library of Early Maine Literature, a University of Maine at Machias Press imprint, with an editorial apparatus created through a faculty-student collaboration overseen by Gerard NeCastro and Marcus LiBrizzi. Thus, the 2021 Early American Reprints edition does not enter an entirely empty field; instead, it complements this existing 2012 edition with several unique features. One of these is the Early American Reprint's inclusion of two anti-Illuminati sermons by Congregationalist ministers Timothy Dwight and Jedidiah Morse, which help demonstrate how the sometimes wildly sensational story squares with early US concerns about religion, morality, and government. Despite its French setting and gothic elements, the novel pointedly addresses its concerns to US democracy in the early republic, and these contextual materials will help readers draw these connections.

Edited by Pressman, the 2021 edition also includes a helpful introduction by Scott Slawinski, which describes this religious and political context, the novel's publication history, Wood's biography and her place in early American literary culture, and the novel's influences in the gothic tradition. The introduction is brief—twelve pages—leaving plenty of room for readers to draw their own conclusions and interpretations. Certainly readers who bring their own critical interests, such as a postsecular approach to the novel's braided concerns with faith and rationality, can find much of interest in the novel.

The edition's ample textual notes identify allusions, help readers keep track of characters, define antiquated or unusual vocabulary, and occasionally point out or correct narrative inconsistencies. The annotations for vocabulary seem particularly directed at undergraduate readers, defining fairly familiar terms (such as "your toilet" meaning "grooming" or a [End Page 799] "fortnight" meaning "two weeks"), but these are unobtrusive for readers who don't need them. And the notes directed at keeping track of characters are helpful for readers of all skill levels, as Wood's convoluted plot filled with aristocratic titles and hidden identities makes tracking characters challenging. (A list of characters provided in this edition is also helpful to this end.) Wood's sensational novel, the political paranoia that provoked it, and the questions of democracy it raises are all surprisingly relevant to twenty-first-century readers, and this new edition makes it easier than ever for readers to access this novel and draw these connections. [End Page 800]

gretchen murphy is the Sue Goldston Lebermann Endowed Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of US Literature (Duke UP, 2005), Shadowing the White Man's Burden: US Empire and Problem of the Color Line (NYUP, 2010), and New England Women Writers, Secularity, and the Federalist Politics of Church and State (Oxford UP, 2021).

审阅者：

• 朱莉娅和光明男爵编辑。作者：莎莉·赛沃德·巴雷尔·基廷·伍德 理查德·S·普雷斯曼
• 格雷琴·墨菲（简介）

由理查德·S·普雷斯曼 (Richard S. Pressman) 创立的非营利出版商 E​​arly American Reprints 发行了莎莉·赛沃德·巴雷尔·基廷·伍德 ( Sally Sayward Barrell Keating Wood) 所著的《朱莉娅与光明男爵》一书的版本。《朱莉娅与光明男爵》最初于 1800 年出版[第 798 页]，是伍德的第一部小说，也是美国第一部由女性撰写的哥特式小说。它发生在法国大革命之前的法国，讲述了朱莉娅的故事，朱莉娅是一位出身不明的善良女英雄，被光明会的一名放荡男爵所诱捕，将她囚禁在他的黑暗城堡里，城堡里充满了秘密，包括她的真实身份。身份。这部小说是专门为了解决与法国大革命相关的世俗主义和无政府状态而写的，因此传达了伍德的联邦党和公理会新英格兰最深的恐惧。

《朱莉娅与光辉男爵》已经绝版了两百多年，直到 2012 年，它作为缅因州早期文学图书馆的一部分重新发行，该图书馆是缅因大学马基亚斯出版社的印记，并拥有由教员创建的编辑机构——学生合作由 Gerard NeCastro 和 Marcus LiBrizzi 监督。因此，2021 年美国早期重印版并没有进入一个完全空白的领域；相反，它通过几个独特的功能补充了现有的 2012 年版本。其中之一是《早期美国重印》收录了公理会牧师蒂莫西·德怀特和杰迪代亚·莫尔斯的两篇反光明会布道，这有助于展示这个有时极其耸人听闻的故事如何与美国早期对宗教、道德和政府的担忧相吻合。尽管小说以法国为背景并具有哥特式元素，但它尖锐地表达了对美国早期共和国民主的担忧，这些背景材料将帮助读者建立这些联系。

2021 年版由普雷斯曼 (Pressman) 编辑，还包含斯科特·斯拉文斯基 (Scott Slawinski) 的有用介绍，介绍了宗教和政治背景、小说的出版历史、伍德的传记和她在美国早期文学文化中的地位，以及小说对哥特式传统的影响。简介很简短（十二页），为读者留下了足够的空间得出自己的结论和解释。当然，如果读者有自己的批判兴趣，比如对小说中对信仰和理性的关注采取后世俗的态度，他们会对小说产生很大的兴趣。

该版本有丰富的文字注释来识别典故，帮助读者跟踪人物，定义过时或不寻常的词汇，并偶尔指出或纠正叙述中的不一致之处。词汇注释似乎特别针对本科生读者，定义了相当熟悉的术语（例如“你的厕所”意思是“梳理”或[结束页799] “两周”意思是“两周”），但这些对于那些不需要它们。旨在跟踪人物的注释对所有技能水平的读者都有帮助，因为伍德的复杂情节充满了贵族头衔和隐藏的身份，这使得跟踪人物具有挑战性。（本版中提供的人物列表也有助于达到这一目的。）伍德的耸人听闻的小说、引发它的政治偏执以及它提出的民主问题都与二十一世纪的读者有着惊人的相关性，而这部新的小说版本使读者比以往任何时候都更容易阅读这本小说并建立这些联系。[完页800]

格雷琴·墨菲是德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校苏·戈德斯顿·莱伯曼文科教授。她是《半球想象：美国文学的门罗主义和叙述》（杜克大学出版社，2005年）、《遮蔽白人负担：美国帝国和肤色界限问题》（纽约大学出版社，2010年）和《新英格兰女性作家的世俗》一书的作者，以及教会和国家的联邦党政治（Oxford UP，2021）。