• A new edition of an old classic! • Now illustrated! • The sources of every poem and quotation in St. Elmo is listed (all 151 of them!) • St. Elmo is edited and streamlined for today's readers (but with respect for Augusta's original text) •St. Elmo is more tightly focused on the love story -- and what a story it is! “It is useless to tell you how devotedly I love you; and yet you have shown my love no mercy.” Flung into the world after the death of her beloved grandfather, 15-year-old Edna Earl, an inveterate bookworm, gets her chance at an education when a rich widow takes her into her home. Edna is overjoyed – until she meets the master of the house, St. Elmo Murray, the widow’s son, a brooding, Byronic man who wears defiance on his brow and misery in his heart. Pure-hearted Edna shrinks from St. Elmo’s dissipation and tries to hide from him through her intensive studies, though they continually clash. Naturally, the seraphim and the devil fall in love. When a desperate St. Elmo lays bare his sordid past to Edna and pleads with her to give her life to purify his, Edna flees temptation by leaving for New York. By day, she works as a governess; by night she gives herself over to writing books. A fantastically ambitious writer, Edna is destroying her health to be an author; and she fights her famished heart in denying her love for St. Elmo. But a heart attack leaves her future in darkness. Ambition, redemption, or death? Fans of clean and wholesome historical romances, as well as books of Georgette Heyer, Mimi Matthews, Julianne Donaldson, and Stacy Henrie, will be swept away by this stunning romance.St. Elmo by Augusta Jane Evans, first published in 1866, was the third most popular novel of the 1800s. This new edition has been annotated, illustrated, and edited to within an inch of its life in order to bring this old favorite to a new generation of readers. St. Elmo is a damn good story, and I'll be the first to be tackling people in the street saying READ THIS BOOK. You know, St. Elmo was the third top-selling novel in the 1800s, up there with Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur. When it first came out, the publisher had fifteen cylinder presses running day and night to keep up with the demand. But there are some issues with this novel that caused it to fall out of favor over the years. Some critics through the year state that Edna seems to have swallowed an unabridged dictionary -- and they're not wrong. It would seem that Augusta shook an encyclopedia upside-down over the original MS to add her references. You don't believe me? Well, get an eyeful of this paragraph from the original St. Elmo: "Pardon me if I remind you, par parenthese, of the preliminary and courteous En garde! which should be pronounced before a thrust. De Guérin felt starved in Languedoc, and no wonder! But had he penetrated every nook and cranny of the habitable globe, and traversed the vast zaarahs which science accords the universe, he would have died at last as hungry as Ugolino. I speak advisedly, for the true Io gad-fly, ennui, has stung me from hemisphere to hemisphere, across tempestuous oceans, scorching deserts, and icy mountain ranges. I have faced alike the bourrans of the steppes and the Samieli of Shamo, and the result of my vandal life is best epitomized in those grand but grim words of Bossuet: 'On trouve au fond de tout le vide et le néant.' Nineteen years ago, to satisfy my hunger, I set out to hunt the daintiest food this world could furnish, and, like other fools, have learned finally, that life is but a huge, mellow, golden Ösher, that mockingly sifts its bitter dust upon our eager lips. Ah! truly, on trouve au fond de tout le vide et le néant!" Now, as you can see, there's a lot to unpack in this one paragraph of Augusta's. The obscure references do little to move the plot forward. They don't reveal anything about St. Elmo that you don't already know, and they obscure the story going on behind it - namely, how St. Elmo is trying to impress upon Edna how "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable" the world is. So what I've done, as editor, was streamline her book. I cut paragraphs that were slowing the story down, and excised some repetition. When I ran into a tangle of references, I smoothed them out by giving them context to make them understandable - if they served the story. If the reference hindered the story, out they went. My entire aim here is to keep this novel focused on Edna and St. Elmo and the struggles they were undergoing. The love story in these pages is incredible, guys, but it gets buried by so much extraneous stuff. So by this streamlining, I hope the love story of Edna and St. Elmo gains new power and vigor -- and a new generation of fans. At any rate, I am very happy to bring St. Elmo to a new audience. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this great old favorite. all best, Melinda R. Cordell An excerpt from St. Elmo: Life stretched before the girl like the sun's path in that clear sky. Asfree from