Full Description
The great-grandmother of Downton Abbey, Barford Abbey is among the first of a new genre of 'abbey fictions.' Using the abbey as a site and a question mark, Susannah Minifie weaves a story of new and broken relationships, of change and fear of change, and of heredity and inheritance. Here the abbey becomes a symbol not simply tied to the gothic but a setting for social dramas that prefigures the realist novels of the nineteenth century. In two compact volumes, the novel achieves innovations in narrative manner and style. Barford Abbey may seem to offer the consolations of melodrama and the comforts of marriage, but the balance of the novel reminds us that parts of life can sometimes be left out, and that life's losses cannot genuinely be recovered.
Contents
Appendix A: 'Writing to the Moment': The Epistolary Style
1. Daniel Defoe, From Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-27) on the London Post Office
2. Samuel Richardson, From Letters Written To and For Particular Friends, on the Most Important Occasions, 1741
3. Samuel Richardson on 'Writing to the Moment' in the 'Preface' to Clarissa, 1748
4. Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 152, 31 August 1751 on Epistolary Style
5. Rev. John Trusler, 'The PENNY-POST.' From The London Advisor and Guide, 1786
Appendix B: The Dissolution of the Abbeys
1. An Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries, 1535
2. William Camden, From Britannia, 1586 [Gough Edition, 1789]
3. David Hume, From The History of England: Under the House of Tudor, 1759 Edition
Appendix C: The Picturesque Abbey as Ruin or Great Mansion
1. George Keate, The Ruins of Netley Abbey, 1764
2. William Gilpin, On Glastonbury and Ford Abbey, From Observations on the Western parts of England, 1798
3. Walter Scott, From Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805
Appendix D: Abbey Fictions
1. Charlotte Smith, From Ethelinde, 1789
2. Regina Maria Roche, From The Children of the Abbey, 1796
3. Jane Austen, From Northanger Abbey, 1817
4. George Gordon, Lord Byron, From Don Juan, 1819
Appendix E: The Reception of Barford Abbey the Writing of Susannah Minifie Gunning
1. Review of Barford Abbey from The Critical Review, Vol. 24, 422-30, edited by Tobias Smollet, 1767
2. Review of Minife's Coombe Wood from The British Magazine and Review, Vol. 2, 127-128, 1783
3. Excerpt of a review of Gunning's poem Virginius and Virginia published in the Critical Review, vol. 5, 1792
