Helen Craik, Adelaide de Narbonne, with Memoirs of Charlotte de Cordet

Fashioning Adelaide de Narbonne as the traditional Gothic heroine characterized by refined sensibility and virtue in distress, Craik connects the story of the Countess with that of Charlotte de Cordet (Charlotte Corday), Jean-Paul Marat's murderer, undoubtedly more than a mere 'appendix' to Adelaide's story, as the title of the novel suggests.

Here reprinted and annotated for the first time, Craik's examination joins the voices of numerous late 18th-century British women writers who openly defied the patriarchal system of values of the time.