Adah Isaacs Menken was the most highly paid and most scandalous stage performer of the 1860s. She is also one of the most fascinating and unconventional writers in American literary history, and the first to follow the revolution in poetry started by Whitman's Leaves of Grass. This edition presents, for the first time, a generous selection of Menken's uncollected poems and essays, along with the first edition of Infelicia (1868), her only book.

Also included is a range of carefully selected appendices that help contextualize Menken's writings in terms of theater, Judaism, Bohemianism, women's rights, and women writers.

Comments:

"With fascinating introduction, notes, and bibliography, Gregory Eiselein clarifies the conflicting accounts of Menken's enigmatic biography and interprets her personal and literary scandals; his appendices set her poems into a literary and historical context. This superb edition makes the powerful voice of Adah Isaacs Menken come alive for twenty-first century readers." - Kathryn Hellerstein, University of Pennsylvania

"Gregory Eiselein's concise writing and thorough research provide the necessary framework for situating Menken's writings in relation to the American Civil War era, a world so rife with conflict and contradiction that we may scarcely recognize it as the heart of the Victorian period." - Renee M. Sentilles, Case Western Reserve University

Gregory Eiselein is a professor of English at Kansas State University. He is the author of Literature and Humanitarian Reform in the Civil War Era (1996) and the editor of Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings (Broadview Press, 2002).

Academics please note that this is a title classified as having a restricted allocation of complimentary copies. While the availability of bound complimentary copies is restricted to desk copies only, electronic complimentary copies are readily available for those professors wishing to consider this title for possible course adoption. Should you choose to adopt the book after viewing an electronic copy we will be happy to provide a bound desk copy.

Table of Contents: [Back to Top]

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Adah Isaacs Menken: A Brief Chronology

A Note on the Text

Infelicia

Resurgam

Dreams of Beauty

My Heritage

Judith

Working and Waiting

The Release

In Vain

Venetia

The Ship That Went Down

Battle of the Stars

Myself

Into the Depths

Sale of Souls

One Year Ago

Genius

Drifts That Bar My Door

Aspiration

Miserimus

A Memory

Hemlock in the Furrows

Hear, O Israel!

Where the Flocks Shall Be Led

Pro Patria

"Karazah" to "Karl"

A Fragment

The Autograph On the Soul

Adelina Patti

Dying

Saved

Answer Me

Infelix

Early Poems

To My Brother Gus

I am Thine--To W.H.K.

The Bright and Beautiful

New Advertisement!!!

"Milton wrote a letter to his lady love"

Wounded

Poems from The Israelite

Sinai

Dum Spiro, Spero

Moses

Oppression of the Jews, Under the Turkish Empire

Spring!

[Hebrew: "Let There Be Light"]                 

To Nathan Mayer, M.D.

Rosaline

What an Angel Said to Me!

To the Sons of Israel

A Heart-Wail

Poems from The Jewish Messenger

[Hebrew: "Rosh Hashanah"]

Spirit Sighs

My World of Thought

All is Beauty, All is Glory!

Poems from the Sunday Mercury

On the Death of Rufus Choate

The Dark Hour

"Why do I love you?"

Knocking at the Door

Dream of the Alhambra

Song

Our Mother

The Last

Passion

Conscience

Gold

Farewell to Fanny

A Wish for Nellie

Louisiana

Lake Michigan

The Storm

Other Uncollected Poems

A L'Outrance!

My Spirit Love

The Poet

Reply to Dora Shaw

Prose

The Angel's Whisper

Shylock

Midnight in New-Orleans

Death and Eternity

The Jew in Parliament

Swimming Against the Current

Self Defence

Affinity of Poetry and Religion

Women of the World

Behind the Scenes

Lodgings to Let--References Exchanged

Notes

Appendix A: Biographies

1. Mark Twain, "The Menken--Written Especially for Gentlemen"
2. Adah Isaacs Menken, "Some Notes of her life in her own Hand"
3. G. Lippard Barclay, The Life and Remarkable Career of Adah Isaacs Menken
4. Ed James, Biography of Adah Isaacs Menken

Appendix B: Correspondence

Appendix C: Critical Reception

Appendix D: Cultural Contexts

1. Rev. Dr. A. Guinzburg, "The Mortara Abduction Case Illustrated"
2. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Woman's Thoughts About Women
3. Lillie Devereux Blake, "The Social Condition of Woman"
4. Junius Henri Browne, "The Bohemians"
5. Marie Louise Hankins, "Lillie Bell: The Female Writer"
6. Ada Clare, "The Man's Sphere and Influence" and "The 'Blue Stocking'"

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