A deluxe Harper Perennial Legacy Edition, with an introduction from Margot Livesey, award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

A compelling historical novel of two families wrestling with questions of honor, class, loyalty, democracy, and independence during the American Revolution, now available in a Harper Perennial Modern Classics Legacy Edition.

In The Linwoods, Catharine Maria Sedgwick illuminates the American character and explores issues of civic virtue and national identity in the early republic, through the lives of two families: the Linwoods, dutiful loyalists, and the Lees, passionate revolutionaries. At the novel’s heart is Isabella Linwood, a bright and independent young woman who will transform from a proud Tory to ardent Rebel, challenging not only British rule but its accepted social, economic, and political institutions, including the aristocracy, slavery, and patriarchal authority.

This Legacy Edition features a lush design and French flaps.

Catharine Maria Sedgwick was born to a prominent New England family in 1789 and went on to become one of the most celebrated novelists of her time. A proud patriot, Sedgwick chronicled the major social issues of early American society—slavery, religious freedom, women's rights, and the ongoing struggle between native and foreign forces—with a unique mix of radical and conservative perspectives. She died in 1867.

Catharine Maria Sedgwick's profile page

MARGOT LIVESEY is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Flight Of Gemma Hardy, The House on Fortune Street, Banishing Verona, Eva Moves the Furniture, The Missing World, Criminals, and Homework. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Vogue, and the Atlantic, and she is the recipient of grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. The House on Fortune Street won the 2009 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Born in Scotland, Livesey currently lives in the Boston area and is a professor of fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Margot Livesey's profile page