Artistic Duplicity offers a new appraisal of the work of Juliana Horatia Ewing not only as a writer of children’s literature, for which she is best known, but as the author of a number of works that are written with adult readers in mind.
William B. Dillingham presents Ewing as an artist whose work deserves to be taken seriously by adult readers who value profundity and skillful writing. Although she writes in a style often accessible to children of somewhat advanced reading ability, she possessed the extraordinary gift of addressing at the same time a more mature audience, conveying thereby not a simple moral but complex and striking ideas. How she managed to do this is an important aspect of the book.
The book is an unusual combination of a scholarly study of a literary figure and a collection of ten writings by that author. It is based on original research and makes a notable contribution to the study of literature in the Victorian era.
We rarely come so close to the Victorians as here, with their tireless interrogation of the correct—the most effective, most powerful, most righteous—mode of living.
Prof. Regenia Gagnier, University of Exeter
Dillingham presents his thoughtful reassessment as a series of introductions to handy reprints of several writings by Ewing.
William J. Scheick, University of Texas at Austin, English Language in Transition 1880-1920
