«Wedlock» by George Egerton

A release in celebration of World Women's day on March 8 2013. “Neurotic and repulsive” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine “A deliberate outrage” Athenaem “Crazy and offensive drivel” Saturday Review Sounds good, right? George Egerton's Wedlock is a pioneering work of 19th Century female writing. First published in 1893, it is a story that set about detonating contemporary ideas of female purity, as well as helping to usher in modernism with its focus on interior life and refusal to adhere to contemporary writing standards. It has with a Dostoyevskian tang: redemption in madness and, eventually, a wonderful sense of relief. With a new, dazzling introduction by our very own Eimear McBride, plus a variety of other interesting titbits (from a small snapshot of the trailblazing Egerton’s life – a woman, it seemed, who had more affairs than Casanova – to two vitriolic articles from stuffy journalists of the period), for the price of a Mars Bar you can take a taste of the strange, dated, and rather glorious work of a writer who paved the way for not only a new generation of women writers and social reformers, but also for the modernist movement. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy – they all owe a debt to Egerton; and we are proud, in our own small way, of helping to make sure she’s not forgotten. This special Galley Beggar Press edition comes with an introduction from our own new female-purity-detonating writer Eimear McBride, a short biography of Egerton's remarkable life and End Notes looking at the phenomenon of the “new woman” – and its most strident critics.