Novella

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  Behind a Mask is one of the thrillers, mysteries, and sensational works Louisa May Alcott published under the pen name A.M. Bernard. It was first published in 1866, and then re-published in 1975 by scholar, rare book dealer, and biographer Madeleine B. Stern. Further readership and analysis of the novella has helped expand understanding of Alcott's work and interests. The story subverts expectations around gender performance, class, and heroism as it follows Jean Muir, a down-on-her-luck actress who disguises herself as a young governess and infiltrates a wealthy family.

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  Mary Shelley wrote Mathilda from 1819-1820, shortly after her novel Frankenstein was an immediate popular hit--but it wasn't published until more than a century later. Narrated by a young woman on her deathbed, the novella explores grief, despair, and redemption. Despite its deployment of familiar Gothic themes like suicide, incest, and a woman withering away, its framing is frequently read as a feminist reclamation of the genre.

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  “'The Yellow Wall-Paper' (1892) holds an important place among rediscovered works by turn-of-the-century American women writers for its bold critique of gender politics in a patriarchal society. The nameless narrator, undergoing the infamous rest cure for what doctors now diagnose as postpartum depression, experiences debilitating psychological effects. At first repulsed by the wallpaper in the room where she is sequestered in a country estate, the narrator comes to like it as she vows to decode its pattern—she imagines many women creeping behind bars and identifies with one trapped woman, arguably a reflection of her painful position as a woman in Victorian America. Many of the story’s first readers considered it a psychological horror tale in the fashion of Poe." - Catherine J. Golden

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  "This story is not about a bygone society’s oppressive strictures, but, rather, about its piecemeal accommodation of subversive actions and vehement passions." - Krithika Varagur

  "The Old Maid" is the second novella in Wharton's 1924 quartet Old New York; each story in the collection represents a decade in "Old New York" society from the 1840s to the 1870s. In this novella (originally subtitled "The Fifties"), Delia and Charlotte conspire to raise Charlotte's secret daughter without activating suspicion within their exacting, closed social circle. Wharton expertly digs into her characters and the social contradictions they exploit to protect their family in a story that is as biting as it is tender and, at times, triumphant. Playwright Zoë Akins won a Pulitzer Prize for her adaption of the book in 1935, and a film starring Bette Davis and directed by Edmund Goulding came out in 1939. We are thrilled to bring this book to new audiences with a free, open access edition available online to all readers with an internet connection.

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  Family curses, demonic doppelgangers, lingering loss, and redemption--Gaskell's 1856 gothic ghost story presents a suspenseful tale with a feminist frame. The anchor to the story is Irish servant Bridget FitzGerald, whose power and fierce pain drives the story's conflict and, ultimately, its resolution, influencing the fates of entire families and towns.