James II (The English Monarchs Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)James II has been vilified as representing monarchical absolutism and militant Catholicism almost since the 1688 revolution. How such a tyrant could have been
Removed from power by a bloodless coup (in England at any rate) sits somewhat uneasily with the accepted wisdom. Miller paints a more complex picture of James eventful early life - escaping from Cromwell, shadowing his elder brother around Europe. He gives a fair account of James prowess as a naval commander and his organisational and administrative skills in the later years of the reign Charles II.
James was torn between his complete loyalty to Charles and his conversion to Catholicism in the 1680's, Charles also showed both exasperation and loyalty towards his rather awkward brother - preferring Monmouth, his natural (though not legitimate) son, but insisting that James be his successor, despite increasingly virulent opposition.
James came to view the fact of his succession - despite many travails, false alarms in terms of Charles producing a legitimate heir, and almost hysterical Whig opposition - as a sign of divine favour. Miller also points out that , for most of his reign James accepted that William of Orange - a Protestant married to his Protestant daughter, Mary - would be his successor. This gave impetus to James to improve the plight of his co-religionists and explains his haste to do so. However Parliamentary opposition to an Act of Toleration led James both to use his power to dispense with Parliamentary acts for particular individuals and to attempt to shape Parliamentary support for his proposals. Both acts were interpreted (after the Revolution) as proof of his authoritarianism. His need for a standing army became an even great cause for concern as he began to nominate more Catholic officers. In actual fact Miller shows James as acting in the tradition of the later years of Charles' rule - attempting to influence the selection and election of loyal parliamentarians, and Miller argues that James' view on legislation, dispensing and suspending powers were at least legally arguable. James did overstep the mark by attempting to populate the judiciary with loyalists (or toadies).
Miller's view however is that having succeeded in getting the most loyal parliament in 1685, James failed to recognize the limits of his parliamentary support.
Having failed to win parliament to toleration, he believed he could again reshape parliament to elect people more amenable to toleration. In this he was, to say the least, poorly advised; and this effort, combined with its consequent attack on the Church of England, led to the fall off in support which led to the invitation to William of Orange to come and help sort out the situation.
Once William landed - undeterred by French threats, the English Navy and Winter weather - James' belief in Providence seems to have collapsed and he viewed the subsequent desertions by his family and officers as a Divine punishment for past sins.
His subsequent years seemed almost to embrace the failure to regain his position and he was viewed by Louis XIV as a figure of sympathy and pity.
Millers scholarship and use of direct contemporary sources is most comprehensive, his judgements of James are clear, direct and credible. This is a book to be cherished.


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A study of King James II and his reign, drawing on a wide array of primary sources from France, Italy and Ireland, as well as England. It explores James's relations with the state and society, focusing on the political, diplomatic and religious issues that shaped his reign.

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Wide Sargasso Sea (Norton Critical Editions) Review

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(More customer reviews)Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Highly recommended.
Jean Rhys, troubled by the one-dimensional Bertha Mason in Bront?'s classic Jane Eyre, or perhaps seeing an opportunity to take the depiction of Creoles out of the hands of English writers, decided to "write her a life." The result is Wide Sargasso Sea, in which the Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre (Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea) finally steps out of the realm of caricature and becomes both human being and symbol. In the Norton Critical Edition edited by Judith L. Raiskin, several commentators expound on their views of what that symbolism means from a Caribbean, British, and feminist perspective.
First, I have noticed that several reviewers mistakenly assume Antoinette is of mixed race (the modern assumption about what Creole means). In the context of the time, however, Creole meant a person of English or European descent living in the Caribbean. Rhys makes this even clearer with terms such as "white Creole" and "white cockroach." This is an important distinction because it, combined with her French ancestry and poverty, sets Antoinette apart from the wealthy English and from the former slaves on the islands who are of African descent. That theme of having no home, no society, nowhere to go, and, essentially, being nonexistent, is integral to the storyline-and fits in perfectly with Bertha's role in Jane Eyre.
Another important point is that Antoinette's mother (as well as her nurse) is from Martinique, a French island at a time when the French and the British were in bitter conflict. This makes Antoinette even more alienated from the societies in which she dwells but of which she is not a part. It's interesting to note that some of the academic commentators mistakenly attribute her mother's birthplace and the origins of the nurse Christophine (one calls her a Haitian, no doubt because of that island's strong associations with obeah) and even get Christophine's name wrong.
Although there are parallels between Antoinette and Jane, between Antoinette and the Black child Tia, and even between Antoinette and her carefully unnamed husband (Rochester), this is a brilliant novel that does not depend on the reader's knowledge of Jane Eyre; like Antoinette herself, it stands alone. There are also many cycles throughout the book, including Antoinette's repeated dream. Antoinette's lack of identity is reinforced by Rochester's invocation of a principle of obeah; he calls her Bertha, a name that is not hers (this also emphasizes the predominance of an English identity over that evoked by the French name Antoinette). There are the clear dichotomies between Rochester and his England, where he is a disenfranchised second son, and Antoinette and her Caribbean, where she belongs neither to the wealthy whites or the freed slaves.
Wide Sargasso Sea invokes the Bible several times. Rochester's father and older brother betray him to Antoinette's stepfather Mason for 30,000 pounds, alluding to the 30 pieces of silver that Judas Iscariot takes from the Romans for betraying Christ. There are numerous references to a rooster or cock crowing at key moments, as the cock did after Peter had denied Christ three times. The Christian allusions are intermixed with the presence of obeah throughout-just as the Christian faith and obeah beliefs from Africa became intermingled in the Caribbean.
Reality and dream are equally inseparable. "Is England like a dream? . . . She said this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up." The unnamed husband (Rochester) retorts, "Well, that is precisely how your beautiful island seems to me, quite unreal and like a dream." Their erotic life is no less a dream. "I watched her die many times . . . Only the sun was there to keep us company. We shut him out. . . . It was at night that I felt danger and would try to forget it and push it away."
Rhys, saddled with the pre-determined ending of Jane Eyre, manipulates its foreshadowing and symbolism brilliantly. Rochester says, "I would give my eyes never to have seen this abominable place." Obeah woman Christophine responds, "You choose what you give, eh?" In a return to the beginning, Antoinette, determined mad by an equally mad Rochester, burns down Thornfield Hall, just as her own childhood home was burnt by the freed slaves who held her and her mother in such contempt ("white cockroach").
There are seemingly endless layers of meaning within the slight 112 pages of Wide Sargasso Sea, about ethnic and national identities, about imperialistic and patriarchical repression, about madness, and about the relative relationship between reality and dream. Ultimately, Antoinette reclaims her identity and reality through a dream-and with her death. The more times you read this rich novel about a poor woman, the more you will discover.
Diane L. Schirf, 8 December 2002.

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Written over the course of twenty-one years and published in 1966, Wide Sargasso Sea, based on Charlotte Brontë\'s Jane Eyre, takes place in Jamaica and Dominica in 1839–45.
Textual notes illuminate the novel\'s historical background, regional references, and the non-translated Creole and French phrases necessary to fully understand this powerful story. Backgrounds includes a wealth of material on the novel\'s long evolution, it connections to Jane Eyre, and Rhys\'s biographical impressions of growing up in Dominica. Criticism introduces readers to the critical debates inspired by the novel with a Derek Walcott poem and eleven essays.

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The Complete Poems Review

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(More customer reviews)The Earl of Rochester lived a life worthy of Tom Jones. He was indeed a deabauched libertine, slightly less worthy of censure than the Marquis de Sade. Yet he was something that De Sade was not, a great wit. Though nowhere near the range or genius of Pope or Swift, he nevertheless compiled a great body of satirical poetry in the Juvenalian tradition. His "Satyre Against Mankind," Like Swift's Houyhnhnms chapters, present human beings in their true place in nature, despite all the panegyrics and biblical references placing us at the top of the chain. If you are lover of satire, as I am, and don't mind observations that place us amongst the lower orders rather than atop some Parnassian peak, give this volume a try.

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John Wilmot, the notorious Earl of Rochester, was the darling of the polished, profligate court of Charles II. One of the finest poets of the Restoration, patron to important playwrights, model for countless witty young rakes in Restoration comedies, he lived a full but short life, dying in 1680 (with a dramatic deathbed renunciation of his atheism) at the age of 33. This edition of Rochester's poetry is annotated and introduced by David M. Vieth. Rochester had many admirers: Graham Greene wrote "Lord Rochester's Monkey"; Daniel Defoe quoted him often; Tennyson recited his poems; Voltaire admired Rochester's satire for "energy and fire"; Goethe could quote Rochester in English, and Hazlitt said that "his verses cut and sparkle like diamonds" and "his contempt for everything that others repsect almost amounts to sublimity".

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