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Deborah D. Rogers

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Deborah D. Rogers (b. 1953) is a literary scholar at the University of Maine. She has published four scholarly books, one about the eighteenth-century bookseller John Almon and three about eighteenth-century Gothic fiction and the novelist Ann Radcliffe. She also edited two editions for Signet Classics, and co-edited a collection of essays about the University of Maine.

Biography

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Deborah Dee Rogers was born in Massachusetts in 1953[1] to Marvin and Marilyn Rogers.[2] She had two brothers.[3] The family moved to Wayne, New Jersey in 1966.[3] Her father worked in the pharmaceutical industry, eventually becoming a director at American Cyanamid Company.[4]

Rogers earned a B.A. from Rutgers University, an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.Phil and Ph.D. from Columbia University.[1] She began her academic career at the University of Maine in Orono in 1982, where she became an associate professor in 1990 and a full professor in 1996.[1]

In 1988, she married Howard Segal, a professor of history also at the University of Maine. She kept her maiden name,[4] and they had two children with Segal's last name.[2] Segal died in 2020, and Rogers assisted in completing his last posthumous publication, Becoming Modern: The University of Maine, 1965–2015 (2023), a collection of essays he was editing with Ann Acheson.[5]

Writing

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Rogers's first monograph, Bookseller as Rogue: John Almon and the Politics of Eighteenth-Century Publishing was published in 1986 to mixed reviews.[6][7][8] This book presents the writer and publisher John Almon as a "rogue" for his opportunistic business decisions, and uses his career as an example of how politics affected booksellers in the period.[6] Reviewers praised her identification of two new manuscript archives with material related to Almon, and the book's bibliography of his publications.[6][7] However, they found the book's analysis of these materials lacking, particularly criticizing the omission of Almon's bookselling activities,[7] and Rogers's casual tone.[8]

Rogers's second monograph, The Critical Response to Ann Radcliffe (1994), collected and examined commentary related to the Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe, including reviews, scholarly articles, and personal letters.[9][10] It was published while Radcliffe was experiencing a revitalization of scholarly interest, and provides source material demonstrating her mixed and frequently-changing reputation since the eighteenth century.[10] Rogers' third scholarly book, Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography (1996), includes bibliographic information about every work published by or about Radcliffe from 1789 to 1993,[11] including imitations, adaptations, parodies, and works spuriously attributed to Radcliffe.[12] It also presents the first biography of Radcliffe to include information from her commonplace book, which had previously been ignored.[11][13] Many previous biographies debated sensationalist rumors that Radcliffe had been driven to madness and death by her Gothic writing, without seeking documentary evidence.[13][14] Rogers instead uses Radcliffe's commonplace book to describe the details of Radcliffe's treatment for asthma and digestive problems in the last years of her life.[15]

Henry Fuseli's painting The Nightmare (1781) was on the cover of Two Gothic Classics by Women, edited by Rogers

In 1995, Rogers edited two books for Signet Classics.[1] The first, an edition of Rob Roy (1817) by Walter Scott,[1] coincided with the release of the 1995 film adaptation and featured Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange on the cover.[16] The second, published as Two Gothic Classics by Women, combined Northanger Abbey (1818) by Jane Austen and The Italian (1796) by Ann Radcliffe.[17] Its cover featured Henry Fuseli's painting "The Nightmare" (1781).[17] Northanger Abbey was written as a parody of Ann Radcliffe's Gothic novels, especially Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794); Rogers chose to pair Northanger Abbey with The Italian rather than Udolpho because she considered The Italian "the most readable and accomplished of Radcliffe's oeuvre".[17]

Rogers's fourth monograph, titled The Matrophobic Gothic and Its Legacy: Sacrificing Mothers in the Novel and in Popular Culture, was published in 2007.[18] It includes chapters on Radcliffe's critical reception and commonplace book, Northanger Abbey, and Rob Roy, which she discussed in her previous works.[19] It also includes a chapter on Pamela (1740) by Samuel Richardson, a chapter on the medical complications of childbirth described in midwife manuals, and a section on modern television soap operas.[19] The book defines matrophobia as the "fear of mothers," "fear of becoming a mother," and "fear of identification with and separation from the maternal body", and argues that patriarchal culture causes women's relationships with each other to be driven by a metaphorical matrophobia.[19] Rogers particularly criticizes anti-maternalism in feminist and psychoanalytic theorists.[19] The final section on soap operas argues that the fragmented narrative structure of daytime television also reinforces patriarchal values.[19]

Bibliography

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Monographs

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  • Bookseller as Rogue: John Almon and the Politics of Eighteenth-Century Publishing. New York: Peter Lang, 1986.
  • The Critical Response to Ann Radcliffe. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1994.
  • Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1996.
  • The Matrophobic Gothic and Its Legacy: Sacrificing Mothers in the Novel and in Popular Culture. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.

Edited works

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  • Rob Roy. New York: Signet Classics, 1995.
  • Two Gothic Classics by Women. New York: Signet Classics, 1995.
  • (with Howard Segal and Ann Acheson) Becoming Modern: The University of Maine, 1965-2015. Orono, Maine: University of Maine Press, 2023.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "Rogers, Deborah D(ee) 1953-". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2025-02-01.
  2. ^ a b "Obituary for Howard Segal". The Boston Globe. 2020-11-15. pp. A28. Retrieved 2025-02-01.
  3. ^ a b "Marvin A. Rogers obituary". The Record. 2021-02-25. pp. L5. Retrieved 2025-02-01.
  4. ^ a b "Deborah Rogers and Howard Segal Are Married". The New York Times. 1988-11-27. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-02-01.
  5. ^ "New Book Details UMaine's Journey of 'Becoming Modern'". Targeted News Service. 7 May 2024 – via ProQuest.
  6. ^ a b c Gilreath, James (1987). "Review of Bookseller as Rogue: John Almon and the Politics of Eighteenth-Century Publishing". The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy. 57 (3): 319–320. ISSN 0024-2519.
  7. ^ a b c Brack, O. M. (1991). "Review of Bookseller as Rogue: John Almon and the Politics of Eighteenth-Century Publishing". Libraries & Culture. 26 (4): 619–620. ISSN 0894-8631.
  8. ^ a b Thomas, Peter D. G. (1989). "Review of Bookseller as Rogue. John Almon and the Politics of Eighteenth-Century Publishing". The English Historical Review. 104 (413): 1048–1049. ISSN 0013-8266.
  9. ^ Tennyson, G. B.; Wortham, Thomas (1994). "Recent Books". Nineteenth-Century Literature. 49 (1): 131–145. doi:10.2307/2934055. ISSN 0891-9356.
  10. ^ a b Benedict, Barbara M. (1995). "The Critical Response to Ann Radcliffe (review)". Eighteenth-Century Fiction. 7 (3): 320–322. doi:10.1353/ecf.1995.0060. ISSN 1911-0243.
  11. ^ a b Ryals, Clyde De L. (1996). "Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century". Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 36 (4): 944. doi:10.2307/450983. ISSN 0039-3657.
  12. ^ Rogers, Deborah D. (1996). Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press. pp. viii. ISBN 9780313283796.
  13. ^ a b Norton, Rictor (1999). Mistress of Udolpho : the life of Ann Radcliffe. Internet Archive. London ; New York : Leicester University Press. pp. vii–viii. ISBN 978-0-7185-0201-0.
  14. ^ Rogers, Deborah D. (1996). Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press. p. 13. ISBN 9780313283796.
  15. ^ Rogers, Deborah D. (1996). Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press. pp. 14–20. ISBN 9780313283796.
  16. ^ Guy, David (1995-05-21). "Rob Roy". The News and Observer. p. 97. Retrieved 2025-02-01.
  17. ^ a b c Slung, Michele (22 Oct 1995). "Book Report". The Washington Post. pp. X. 15 – via ProQuest.
  18. ^ "The matrophobic gothic and its legacy; sacrificing mothers in the novel and in popular culture". Reference and Research Book News. 22 (4). 2007 – via ProQuest.
  19. ^ a b c d e Rintoul, Suzanne (2010). "The Matrophobic Gothic and Its Legacy: Sacrificing Mothers in the Novel and in Popular Culture (review)". Eighteenth-Century Fiction. 23 (2): 441–443. doi:10.1353/ecf.2010.0023. ISSN 1911-0243.
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