Adeline Mowbray (Oxford World's Classics)

Adeline Mowbray (Oxford World's Classics) by Opie, Amelia. Paperback edition. ISBN: 9780192833303.

Personal as well as political, Adeline Mowbray (1804) is loosely based on the relationship between Amelia Opies friends, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Written in a period of conservative reaction in Britain, the novel recalls the earlier radical era of the 1790s. Encouraged by her mother to pursue an interest in radical social ideas, Adeline Mowbray innocently puts her theories of idealized love into practice. Her attempt to live with the philosopher Frederic Glenmurray outside marriage is condemned by both her mother and society. Adeline and Glenmurrays relationship becomes the focal point for Opies satire on societys attitudes to education, women, marriage, masculine and feminine codes of honour, filial loyalty and the struggle to justify individual choice. This Oxford Worlds Classics volume is currently the only critical edition of Adeline Mowbray available.