The Old Manor House

The Old Manor House is a novel by Charlotte Turner Smith, first published in 1793.[1] The plot tells the love story of a gentleman, Orlando Somerive, and his aunt's servant, Monimia Morysine. The novel blends gothic, sentimental, and political narrative techniques[2][3] to present a "polemical romance,"[4] depicting the American revolution of the 1770s to comment on the ongoing French revolution of the 1790s.[3][5] Smith particularly critiqued the injustices of war[4] and property laws.[1] The Old Manor House is sometimes considered the best of Charlotte Smith's ten novels,[1][3] drawing particular praise for its deep characterization, engaging plot, and descriptions of nature.[3]

The Old Manor House
Title page of the first edition
AuthorCharlotte Turner Smith
Publication date
1793

Smith composed the novel between August 1792 and January 1793, a period when the French Revolution was growing more violent.[3] Smith was sympathetic to the political goals of the French revolutionaries.[3] Her previous novel, Desmond (1792), was explicitly political in its depiction of contemporary events, and received strong criticism for its pro-French ideas.[3] As anti-French sentiment grew even stronger in England, Smith grew less direct about her political ideas; The Old Manor House expresses similar ideals as Smith's earlier work, but filtered through her country's recent history rather than current events.[3]

References
  1. Labbe, Jacqueline M. (2001). "Metaphoricity and the Romance of Property in "The Old Manor House"". Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 34 (2). doi:10.2307/1346216.
  2. Nordius, Janina (2005). ""A Kind of Living Death": Gothicizing the Colonial Encounter in Charlotte Smith's The Old Manor House". English Studies. 86 (1): 40–50. doi:10.1080/0013838042000339871.
  3. Labbe, Jacqueline, ed. (2002). The Old Manor House. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press. ISBN 1-55111-213-2. OCLC 50022734.
  4. Parkes, Simon (2011). ""More Dead than Alive": The Return of Not-Orlando in Charlotte Smith's The Old Manor House". European Romantic Review. 22 (6): 765–784. doi:10.1080/10509585.2011.616097. ISSN 1050-9585.
  5. Murphy, Carmel (2014). "Jacobin History: Charlotte Smith's Old Manor House and the French Revolution Debate". Romanticism. 20 (3): 271–281. doi:10.3366/rom.2014.0191. ISSN 1354-991X.


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