Jo Parnell's carefully curated collection brings attention to a figure often maligned and misunderstood in popular culture. Parnell's introduction and the chapters that follow offer readers a multidisciplinary journey across the globe and across time, from the Roman Empire to British colonial Nigeria to Hitchcock's Manderley. Whether she is the product of concubinage, polygamy, or remarriage after the death or divorce of her predecessor, the second wife looms large in film and literature as both a victim of and threat to patriarchy.

Julie Anne Taddeo, University of Maryland

This collection is full of surprises. Whatever you think you know about the second wife will be contradicted as the focus shifts across countries and continents and across decades and millennia. The stories intersect with religion, law, culture, divorce, polygamy, sexuality, and of course patriarchy. No wonder the second wife has proved irresistible for writers and directors. The essays show vividly the variety of these fictional versions and their impact on their audiences. Now any lucky reader of this rich collection can sample vicariously some of this ferment of attitudes and experiences . . .

Hugh Craig, Emeritus Professor, FAHA, University of Newcastle

Following Dr. Jo Parnell’s groundbreaking and genuinely international collections on the cultural representations of the mother-in-law and the bride, comes this third volume on yet another underexplored universal female familial role, namely the second wife. Dr. Parnell, who envisaged, actualized, and edited this essential series, her expert contributors, and her publisher, are to be congratulated on creating this stunning collection of scholarly articles from around the globe. Ranging freely across times, places, histories, cultures, and social structures, as well as genres and cultural texts, Cultural Representations of the Second Wife: Literature, Stage, and Screen is essential reading for anyone interested in the second wife’s experiences across multiple contexts.

Dr. Josephine May, University of Newcastle