Abridged by Alan Rauch
Long-awaited reprint of a rare nineteenth-century science fiction novel with a feminist perspective.
One of the few science fiction novels written by a woman, The Mummy! creates the perfect world through science and technology.
Influenced by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Loudon's tale of a reanimated mummy depicts a future in which morality is no longer a concern as it was in Regency England. Loudon was horrified by her perception of England as a society that was degenerating for lack of moral standards. In The Mummy!, she creates a utopia in which moral imperatives drive human science, making science and technology not the enemy, but rather positive forces in the future of humankind.
Of interest to Romanticists, Victorianists, feminist critics, and science fiction scholars.
An Ann Arbor Paperback.
Jane (Webb) Loudon (1807--58) is best known as one of the nineteenth century's most successful popularizers of botany and horticulture. She coedited and cowrote numerous books with her husband, John Claudius Loudon, and published several botanical guides "for Ladies" independently. Prior to her married life, Loudon attempted a career as a novelist and published several works, including The Mummy! Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century.
Alan Rauch is Professor of Literature, Georgia Institute of Technology.
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6 x 9, ca 400 pagesISBN 0-472-09574-9
cloth 42.50E (tentative)
ISBN 0-472-06574-2
paper 16.95E (tentative)
August