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The Storm: An Antebellum Tale of Key West

Online ISBN:
9780813071282
Print ISBN:
9780813079141
Publisher:
University Press of Florida
Book

The Storm: An Antebellum Tale of Key West

Ellen Brown Anderson,
Ellen Brown Anderson
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Keith L. Huneycutt (ed.)
Keith L. Huneycutt
(ed.)
Florida Southern College
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Published online:
23 January 2025
Published in print:
10 September 2024
Online ISBN:
9780813071282
Print ISBN:
9780813079141
Publisher:
University Press of Florida

Abstract

This edited text publishes Ellen Brown Anderson’s The Storm with a contextualizing introduction and afterword. Told from the perspective of a young bride, Jenny Greenough, this novella is set in Key West, Florida during the hurricane year of 1846. The narrator presents the views of a woman whose education, upbringing, and social expectations have left her unprepared for marriage and the demands and challenges of adult life. The story also presents a woman’s unique viewpoint on the economy and society of mid-nineteenth-century Key West, including a perspective on the island’s shipwreck salvage industry and the town’s get-rich-quick economy. The introduction provides background on the author’s life, writing aspirations, and antebellum Florida, particularly Key West. It also places the story in the context of female authors and American literature, Florida literature, and Key West literature, particularly literature written by and about women. The text of the tale itself is transcribed from the manuscript stored at the University of Florida, and the editor’s afterword traces the manuscript from its completion in the mid nineteenth century to its arrival at UF in 2015. Huneycutt aIso lays out the evidence for attributing the authorship of this unsigned and undated manuscript to Ellen Brown Anderson; explains her sister Corinna’s possible role in the tale’s creation; and identifies the artist most likely responsible for the story’s pen and ink illustrations as Mannevillette Brown, a professional lithographer and painter. In addition, this book reprints the author’s short story “A Novel in a Nutshell,” first published pseudonymously in The Knickerbocker in 1850.

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