Zofloya; Or, the Moor: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century (Gothic Novels II)

Rating:
Summary: A good study in Gothic Literature. Sex and violence galore.
Review: Kim Ian Michasiw is the associate professor at my university (York U in Toronto!) and he's awesome. He brilliantly sets up his ideas in the introduction of this work and provides, as clearly as he can, something of a chronology (much is yet to be known about Dacre's life). The book is an interesting study in gothic literature and feminine writing circa Jane Austen.
Eighteenth-century trash, actually. Lots of sex and violence, elegantly written. Also interesting in its portrayal of race and the sexualization of "The moor". A perverse work, actually.

Rating:
Summary: The Poisoned Pages
Review: The text is of particular interst for its depiction of "subtle poison that which is extracted from and administered by books" (Dacre)The act of writing and reading are "sovereign poisons," an interesting notion from a woman writer in the early 19th century.

Rating:
Summary: Two novels in one
Review: This actually seems like two separate novels. The first section describes Victoria, a spoiled woman who's mother leaves her father for a libertine. The first Volume and a half describe her life and her attempts at becoming her own woman. But the telling is quick and boring. The second half tells of only a few months of Victoria's life, and her strange love for Zofloya, the moorish servant of her husband's brother. Fromt his point on, the novel becomes a harrowing tale of murder and revenge. Intensely violent, and very entertaining, the second half almost makes of for the rather lackluster beginning.