I have been working on the Zittaw website for the last few days. The semester has ended and I have two uninterupted months to devote to my own research and catching up with Zittaw material, so I finally turned my attention to updating the site. We also now have a preliminary cover for Isabella Kelly's The Baron's Daughter, but continue tweaking the edges. Covers, as I indicated in my last entry are so important, we do judge the content by them. I decided that the cover of this particular 19th century novel should be modern in its appearance rather than a painting, etching or such. The book really demands it as the characters are rather timeless in their behaviour and thoughts and why shouldn't we see these characters as everybodies, as the girl next door, the guy down the street, the people we see, but cannot be? The Gothic is really timeless, the fears they generate, the social norms they challenge, the questions they raise. Our last title, Bungay Castle by Elizabeth Bonhote is the perfect example of this balance. The heroes and heroine are typical teenagers, fighting the authority of their parents, looking for love, disappointed in love, finding adventure, and discovering their sexual awareness. These issues defy classification to one literary genre or another, they really tell the story of ourselves and it is precisely that point that makes them interesting.
Anyhow, I am including the new cover, if you have a response, let me know, its just an idea.
