The "Amber Gods" and Other Stories

by Spofford, Harriet Prescott; Bendixen, Alfred

• ISBN13: 9780813514000
• ISBN10: 0813514002
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1989-06-01
• Publisher: Rutgers Univ Pr
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Summary

This collection contains ten tales -- including five that have never before appeared in book form -- by Hamet Prescott Spofford, the only woman writer to master the mode of the symbolic romance, which is often clamed to represent the mainstream of American fiction. Spofford dazzled readers in the early 1860s with a number of stories that seemed to enlarge the boundaries of romantic fiction. She established a reputation as the female heir to the literary tradition of Poe and Hawthorne with such works as the detective story "In a Cellar," the complex symbolic romance "The Amber Gods," and the frightening tale of frontier adventure. "Circumstance." These three stories provide the most important female counterpart to the works of the major male romantics and represent the final flowering of romantic fiction in New England.

Author Biography

Alfred Bendixen teaches in the English department at California State University, Los Angeles. He has edited Haunted Women, a collection of supematural tales by American women writers, and a new edition of the composite novel The Whole Family.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. ix
Selected Bibliography	p. xxxv
A Note on the Text	p. xxxviii
In a Cellar	p. 1
The Amber Gods	p. 37
Circumstance	p. 84
In the Maguerriwook	p. 97
The Moonstone Mass	p. 115
The Black Bess	p. 129
Her Story	p. 148
Miss Susan's Love Affair	p. 167
Old Madame	p. 181
The Godmothers	p. 206
Explanatory Notes	p. 217
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