Full Description
Robert Bage's Hermsprong satirizes English society of the 1790s targeting, in particular, corrupt clergymen, grasping lawyers and wicked aristocrats. The protagonist, a European raised among Native Americans, visits Europe and is dismayed by what he encounters. While such satire might seem conventional enough, Hermsprong is distinguished from other political novels of the period by its comedy, and it is a measure of Bage's success that he won the admiration of writers as different in political outlook as Mary Wollstonecraft and Sir Walter Scott. Indeed, Hermsprong is built around debate, and celebrates the pleasures of the lively exchange of ideas.
This Broadview edition contains extensive primary source appendices including material by William Godwin, Benjamin Franklin, Pierre de Charlevoix, and Voltaire.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Robert Bage: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
Hermsprong
Appendix A: Bage's Life
William Godwin, from a letter to Mary Wollstonecraft, 15 June, 1797
From William Hutton, "Memoirs of Mr. Bage," The Monthly Magazine (Jan. 1802)
Appendix B: Bage's Fiction
Monthly Review on Bage's early fiction
Mount Henneth
Barham Downs
The Fair Syrian
James Wallace
Man as he Is
Selected responses to Hermsprong
William Taylor
Mary Wollstonecraft
The British Critic
The Critical Review
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Sir Walter Scott
Robert Bage on novel-writing
Preface to Mount Henneth
Preface to Man as he Is
Appendix C: America and Eighteenth-Century Literature
Europeans observing Americans
From Pierre de Charlevoix, Journal of a Voyage to North-America(London, 1761)
From Benjamin Franklin, "Remarks concerning the Savages ofNorth America" (London, 1793)
From John Shebbeare, Lydia, or Filial Duty (London, 1755)
From William Smith, An Historical Account of the Expedition against the Ohio Indians (Philadelphia, 1765)
"Americans" observing Europeans
From Baron de Lahontan, New Voyages to North America (1703)
From Joseph Addison, The Spectator (April 27, 1711)
From Voltaire, L'Ingenu; or, the Sincere Huron:A True History (London, 1768)
Eighteenth-Century Michillimackinac
From Pierre de Charlevoix, Journal of a Voyage to North-America(London, 1761)
From John Long, Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter and Trader (London, 1791)
From Alexander Henry, Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories (1809)
From Jonathan Carver, Travels through the Interior Parts of North America (London, 1778)
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