Clotilda Jennings - "Isabel Leicester"

William Tyler Olcott - "A Field Book of the Stars"

Anna Kelsey Howard - "The Canadian Elocutionist"

Various - "Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Mary Gray

K >> Katharine Tynan >> Mary Gray




Sometimes the present took odd shapes. There was a young housemaid whose
eyes were ringed about with black circles, eyes pale with much weeping.
Her mother was ill among the Essex marshes, and the only chance for her
life, said the doctors, was to get her away to a mild, bracing place for
some months. Bournemouth would do very well. Bournemouth? Why, Heaven
was much more accessible, it seemed, than Bournemouth for the poor
mother of many children.

"Emma Brooks," said the General. "I wonder what's in this envelope for
Emma Brooks."

Poor Emma came up, smiling a wavering smile that was on the edge of
tears. She took the envelope, peered within it, and then cried out, "Oh,
God bless you, sir!" It contained a letter of admission to a
convalescent home at Bournemouth for six months, and the money for the
expenses of getting there. "It's my mother's life, sir," cried Emma.
"You shall go home to-morrow, my girl, and take her there," said the
General. "I'll pay whatever is necessary."

At last the Tree was stripped of nearly everything but its candles and
its bright dingle-dangles. There was a little basket at the foot of the
Tree addressed to the General, which had been moving about in a peculiar
way during the proceedings, and had been a source of much fascinated
interest to the dogs. On its being opened a fat, waddling, brindle
bull-dog puppy sidled himself out of a warm bed, and made straight for
the General's feet. A puppy was something Sir Denis never could resist,
and though there were already several dogs at Sherwood Square, all
desperately jealous at the moment and being held in by the servants, he
discovered that he had wanted a brindled bull-dog all his life.

"But what is that," he asked, "up there at the top of the Tree? Why, I
was near forgetting it. Come here, Pat, you rascal, and hand it down to
me. It's a pretty, shining thing for my Nelly, as bright as her eyes.
Hand it down to me, Pat. I want to put it on her pretty neck."

The gift was a beautiful flexible snake of opals in gold, with diamonds
for its eyes and its forked tongue, such a jewel as the heart of woman
could not resist. The General himself clasped the ornament on Nelly's
neck, where it lay emitting soft fires of milky rose and emerald.

There was a little pause. The Tree seemed to be finished. The women-folk
began to clear their throats for the _Adeste Fideles_ with which the
festivity concluded. Afterwards there was to be a glass of champagne all
round.

The pause, however, was a device of the General's to give more effect to
what was to follow. Captain Langrishe had been standing apart, his shy
and modest air commending him the more to the women who thought him so
handsome and the men who knew him for heroic; for had not Pat sung his
praises? And to be sure, the women's hearts swelled at beholding a hero
taking part in their own particular festivity of the year, a hero that
is to say with his heroism brand-new upon him and from the outside
world, so to speak. They were so accustomed to a hero for a master all
the year round, that in that particular connection they hardly thought
upon him.

"I believe, after all," said Sir Denis, as though he were talking to
children--it was his way with women and children and dependents and
animals--"I believe there's something for my girl which she'll think
more of than anything else. It's hidden just down here at the foot of
the Tree, and might very easily be over-looked if one didn't know
beforehand that it was there. Captain Langrishe, will you give this
little packet to my Nelly? It's your gift. She'll like it from you."

Langrishe came forward, looking radiantly happy and handsome, and
wearing withal that look of becoming shyness. He extracted from
somewhere near the roots of the Tree a white paper-covered packet, very
tiny and tied with blue ribbon, which he undid with quick, nervous
fingers. When he had laid the covering aside it revealed itself as a
little ring-case. Opening it, he took out a beautiful old-fashioned
ring, a large pearl surrounded by diamonds. He held it for a second
between his fingers; and turning round he went to Nelly's side and
taking her hand lifted it to his lips. Then he slipped the ring on to
her third finger.

"My dear friends," said the General in an agitated voice, "I am very
happy to announce to you the engagement of my daughter to Captain
Langrishe."

At that the cheering broke out, led by Pat. As the dogs joined in, and
even the brindle puppy added his shrill note, there was the happiest,
merriest uproar lasting over several minutes, during which the General
stood, looking proudly from the shy and smiling lovers to those
dependants whom he had really made his friends.

And at last, when the pause came, the General spoke:

"And now, my friends," he said, "to show that God is not forgotten in
our happiness and in our grateful hearts, we will sing the _Adeste
Fideles_."

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