George Newman’s Bookshelf

George A. Newman’s novel A Miserable Revenge is a text of its time. Many aspects of the text are inspired by the things Newman had read. In the editor’s introduction of A Miserable Revenge, Mollie Godfrey and Brooks Hefner explain that Newman had an “admirable interest in using the conventions of popular fiction” (Godfrey and Hefner xv). He frequently references well-known sources such as Shakespeare and the Bible, all while following the themes and genres made popular in nineteenth-century dime novels and serial fiction and, additionally, using the direct reader address common in nineteenth-century realist fiction. Use the tool below to learn more about these references and genres and how they appear in the novel. Each bubble on the Prezi tool below will provide a brief background of its topic with a few quotes that exemplify their relationship to A Miserable Revenge. 

To explore this Prezi, you can use the arrows on the bottom to follow the natural pattern of the project. It will take you through the large categories in the following order: Shakespeare, Dime Novels & Serial Fiction, The Bible, and Dear Reader. Within each larger category, it will take you through the breakout categories and quotes starting at the left and ending at the right side of the page. You can also click through freely to see the information in any order you wish.

Credit: Sara Arnold and Mary Katherine Kirkwood

Works Cited

“A Mean Revenge.” Frank Leslie’s Pleasant Hours, vol. 6-7, no. 1, 1869, pp. 529-531.

Apostel, Shawn. “Prezi and Powerpoints Designed to Engage: Getting the Most Out of Quick-and-Dirty Pathos.” Multimodal Composing: Strategies for Twenty-First-Century Writing Consultations, edited by Lindsay A. Sabatino and Brian Fallon, Utah State University Press, 2019, pp. 81-96.

Becker, George C. “Realism: An Essay in Definition.” Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 2, 1949, pp. 184–197.

Bedore, Pamela. “The Case of the Missing Detectives; or, Reassessing the American Contribution to Detective Fiction.” Dime Novels and the Roots of American Detective Fiction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 1-34.

Beer, Gillian. “The Reader as Author.” Authorship, vol. 3, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1-9.

Brown, Meaghan J. “Addresses to the Reader.” Book Parts, edited by Dennis Duncan and Adam Smyth, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 83-93.

Cole, Tiffany. “About the Author.” A Miserable Revenge: A Story of Life in Virginia, edited by Mollie Godfrey, Brooks Hefner, Jeslyn Pool, and Evan Sizemore, JMU Libraries, 2025.

Cox, J. Randolph. “Dime Novels.” The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, edited by Gary Kelly, Joad Raymond, and Christine Bold, vol. 6, 2012, pp. 63-83.

Godfrey, Mollie, and Brooks Hefner. “Editors’ Introduction.” A Miserable Revenge: A Story of Life in Virginia, edited by Mollie Godfrey, Brooks Hefner, Jeslyn Pool, and Evan Sizemore, 2025, pp. xv-xxviii.

Godfrey, Mollie, and Brooks Hefner. “Note on the Text.” A Miserable Revenge: A Story of Life in Virginia, edited by Mollie Godfrey, Brooks Hefner, Jeslyn Pool, and Evan Sizemore, 2025, pp. xv-xxviii.

Newman, George. A Miserable Revenge: A Story of Life in Virginia, edited by Mollie Godfrey, Brooks Hefner, Jeslyn Pool, and Evan Sizemore, JMU Libraries, 2025.

Pizer, Donald. “Late Nineteenth-Century American Realism: An Essay in Definition.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 16, no. 3, 1961, pp. 263-269. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2932644.

Pope, Anne-Marie. “American Dime Novels 1860-1915.” Historical Association. https://www.history.org.uk/student/resource/4512/american-dime-novels-1860-1915.

Shakespeare, William. Cymbeline [1611] from The Folger Shakespeare, edited by Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library, 2025. https://folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/romeo-and-juliet/

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet [1603] from The Folger Shakespeare, edited by Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library, 2025. https://folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/romeo-and-juliet/

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet [1597] from The Folger Shakespeare, edited by Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library, 2025. https://folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/romeo-and-juliet/

Sparks, Tabitha. “Introduction.” Victorian Metafiction, University of Virginia Press, 2022, pp. 1-48.

Stewart, Garrett. “Readers in the Making.” Dear Reader: The Conscripted Audience in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 3-7.

Stewart, Garrett. “On Terms with the Reader.” Dear Reader: The Conscripted Audience in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 25-35.