Richard Wright died 50 years ago and in that time there has been little research on the role of women in his powerful novels of African-American life in America. This research monograph fulfills that informational and interpretative need.

This is an intriguing and groundbreaking study by a scholar who not only is not British nor Indian but belongs to a society that has had its own imperial history as well as having a strong ,revitalizing nationalist movement in the 20th c. It is through this prism that Dr Kapakli discusses,compares and contrasts Indian nationalism in three seminal novels. The novels in question are Shadow of the Moon (1957)by Mary Margaret Kaye, the Siege of Knishnapur(1973) by James Gordon Smith and White Teeth (2000)by Zadie Smith.

Recently there has been a growing scholarly interest in Sydney, Lady Morgan (nee Sydney Owenson). The reasons are many. In this work Dr.Donovan contextualizes an important yet relatively neglected author by analyzing an emblematic Irishness that was too often dismissed in the early 19th century as excessive showmanship; the criticism was not without some basis since Owenson was an actor’s daughter and grew up in the company of traveling performers.

This research monograph is an analysis of the English girls’ school-story, not mainly as an aspect of children’s literature, but as a genre which, despite the conservatism of the surface text, deeply challenges and subverts traditional societal constructs and provides images of liberation and self creation for girls and women. The work examines the alternative life-views, role–models and “possibilities of becoming” offered by the texts.