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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 9 August 2022 [1].

Rachel Dyer

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Nominator(s): Dugan Murphy (talk) 17:41, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is a novel by John Neal (writer), considered by scholars to be his best. Nobody's ever heard of it, but it is the first bound novel about the Salem witch trials and had a clear impact on later works by Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier, and Whitman. If you have heard of it, that may be only because of the book's preface, which is somehow more famous than the novel itself. It deals with universal themes like justice, sexual frustration, and cultural pluralism. I've taken a few articles through FAC and one of them was about a novel, so I feel pretty equipped for this nomination. The article just went through GAN review, so it's somewhat polished already. I'm excited to read and respond to whatever comments people have to help me further improve the piece. Thank you in advance for your time! Dugan Murphy (talk) 17:41, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • File:Rachel_Dyer_by_John_Neal_Title_Page.jpg: it's unlikely this is creative enough to warrant copyright protection
Good point. I just switched the licensing tag to {{PD-ineligible}}. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:09, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Link fixed and licensing tag switched to {{PD-old-70-expired}}. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:09, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the image review! Let me know if you find something else or if you think the licensing tags should be changed again. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:09, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria: Would you say that the nomination has passed your image review? Dugan Murphy (talk) 23:10, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:12, 12 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Kavyansh

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  • "around genuine historical figure George Burroughs" — I doubt whether we need 'genuine' here.
We can probably get by without it. My concern was distinguishing Burroughs as a real person from history, versus Neal's fictional character, Rachel Dyer. Deleted! Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "in which the author" — "in which Neal"
Done. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "of English common law's" — capitalize 'c' in 'common'
Done. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • We have repeated 'George Burroughs' many times, when we can simply write 'Burroughs'
I removed 4 Georges. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... highlights the relative value placed on human life in either era" — According to whom? should be specified in the text.
Fair. Names added. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Rachel Dyer was published the same year as Noah Webster's first dictionary." — Is there any connection between these both. If not, is it worth mentioning?
I just rewrote that part. I believe I have made the connection clearer. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "His choice to" — Whose?
Clarified. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In this way, argue the scholars Watts & Carlson" — Better would be to write "according to the scholars ...". Also, any reason why we have not been introduced to these distinguished gentlemen by their first names?
I took your suggestion on rewording the sentence and I also added first names. I now have Carlson's full name written out twice in one section, but it feels wrong to use only his last name when Watts's name is fully written out right next to the second instance. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "one of ''[[Blackwood's Magazine]]'''s" — "one of ''[[Blackwood's Magazine]]''{{'s}}"
Good catch. Done. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "William Blackwood accepted the story" — perhaps 'Scottish publisher William Blackwood accepted the story"
Sure! Done. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "After returning to his native Portland, Maine in 1827" — Missing MOS:GEOCOMMA
If you got paid a nickel for every missing geocomma you have found in something I've written... Fixed. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "in five issues of The New York Mirror in" — According to our article, 'The' is not in the title, thus would not be italicized, and 'New-York' would be hyphenated.
Good catch. That's the kind of thing I like getting right. Fixed. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Burroughs was well-known for" — 'famous'?
Sure! Changed. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "He wrote it, he said, "hoping it ..." — Optional: "According to Neal, he wrote them "hoping it ..."
I like yours better. Changed. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "it is clear that he wrote" — can remove 'it is clear that'. If it is that clear, we don't need to specify it.
Indeed. Deleted. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Chapter One of Rachel Dyer is preceded by a three-page preface" — Doesn't the preface always precede the first chapter?
Reworded. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Neal wrote the latter in 1825 for Blackwoods Magazine as an" — It is "Blackwood's Magazine", with that quote mark which Neal omitted, but we should not!
Good catch. Fixed. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Washington Irving as a copy of Joseph Addison" — Is 'copy' the most appropriate word?
Reworded. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • ""I shall never write what is now worshipped [sic] under the name of classical English ... the deadest language I ever met with", Neal said" — Avoid starting a sentence with a quotation. Same with " "Wherever Neal's imagination has been employed"
Sure. Fixed. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Good catch! Kind of embarrassing since I wrote Seventy-Six (novel) and brought it through FAC myself. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The reader might benefit from knowing who 'Fritz Fleischmann' is.
Added (earlier in the article). Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ref#24: "Pethers 2012, p. 24–25" — pp.
Fixed. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent article! Just few nitpicks. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 18:16, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Kavyansh.Singh: And an excellent list of nitpicks. I really appreciate you taking the time to read it through, follow the Wikilinks, and even check the coding behind the apostrophes. I feel that I have resolved all your comments and the article is better as a result. Dugan Murphy (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Great! Happy to support the article as it meets the criteria. I always enjoy reviewing articles that interest me, and it is pleasure to read articles like this one! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 17:28, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

HF - support

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I can review but it'll be a couple days Hog Farm Talk 17:11, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • " Neal expanded Rachel Dyer after returning to his hometown, Portland," - in the lead recommend making it clear that this is Portland, Maine; while Maine is mentioned earlier in the lead IMO it isn't obvious that Neal lived in Maine
Agreed. Done. Dugan Murphy (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given the mix of historical and fictional figures in the plot, maybe note upon reference in the plot that Rachel Dyer isn't a real figure or (presumably) based on one? The tangle of real and fictional people reminds of reading Rifles for Watie as a kid and trying to keep track of which officers were real and which weren't. I know Dyer's status is discussed later in the article, but it leaves the reader wondering until then
Good point. I added a phrase in parentheses stating her purely fictional status. Dugan Murphy (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In that way, Neal anticipated many 21st-century historians' arguments that the witch hysteria grew from colonists' anxieties born of recent wars with Indigenous nations" - recommend inline attribution to the author who wrote this
Done. Dugan Murphy (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "With Tituba and John Indian the only couple in the household" - the only reference to John Indian I can find the article, I would suggest some sort of gloss to indicate what kind of role he plays in the story
I added a reference to John Indian as Tituba's husband at her first appearance in the plot summary. Dugan Murphy (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Many in Portland had rejected him based on controversy surrounding his earlier novels and articles for British magazines" why where these controversial? Was it that he was publishing for the Brits not long after the War of 1812, or were his works accused of lewdness or something?
Neal included a few well-known local Portland figures in his earlier novels (particularly Errata). He called out his old schoolmaster for physical abuse and his first employer for shady business practices. His pieces in the British magazines included some biting criticism of American authors, written by Neal behind the thin veil of an assumed English pen name, Carter Holmes. So many Portlanders felt like he was selling his hometown and his country short for a profit and for a leg-up in his literary career. I rewrote that sentence a bit to make it a little less mysterious. Dugan Murphy (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "is now worshipped [sic]" - why sic? Isn't the double-p spelling the more common anyways?
Looking it up just now, it appears that double-p is the British standard while single-p is the American standard. He uses "critick" and other archaic spellings, so I figured his was one of those. I'll remove the [sic]. Dugan Murphy (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "A second edition was not released until it was republished by facsimile in 1964." [from the lead] vs, "nd never saw a second edition, though it was first republished by facsimile with an original introduction by John D. Seelye in 1964" [from the body]. So was the 1964 facsimile a second edition or not?
Good point! I added "in Neal's lifetime" to the second instance to clarify. Dugan Murphy (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's it from me. Hog Farm Talk 02:27, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Hog Farm: Thank you very much for reading through the article and writing out these comments. I believe they are all addressed now. Dugan Murphy (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - pass

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  • All sources are of high quality.
  • Formatting is fine
  • Spot checks: fn 30, 58, 67 -okay

Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:01, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Mike Christie

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I'm copyediting as I read through; please revert anything you disagree with.

  • The first two sentencese in the "Plot" section are "The novel opens with the narrator stating that belief in witchcraft is a universal human trait and was well established amongst educated authorities in the 1690s in both the United Kingdom and British North America. Puritans fled persecution in England when they colonized New England, but quickly used violence against Quaker colonists and Indigenous Wampanoag." These two sentences seem unrelated to each other. Does the second give us more information about what the narrator is telling us? Or is this just historical background about the setting?
    Good point. I reworded as three sentences for clarity. I'll continue assessing your other points soon. Dugan Murphy (talk) 13:10, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think we need a few more words introducing the sentence about Mary Dyer and Elizabeth Hutchinson. Dyer was hanged in 1660, but we're using the historic present after talking about the 1690s, so it's not clear this is prior to the main action of the novel; and in fact we haven't explicitly given the time and place where the novel is set.
    I changed the verbs to past tense and merged these sentences with the previous paragraph to make it more clear that this is what the narrator is describing as the lead-up to the witch hysteria, which is the main action of the novel. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "display demonic behavior": presumably this means people think they are possessed, but unless we believe in demons we shouldn't say it was actually demonic behaviour in Wikipedia's voice.
    Agreed. I added language to make it clear that we're talking about Matthew Paris's perception. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Tituba, an Indigenous household servant whom he enslaves": this phrasing makes it sounds as though the enslaving happens over the same time period as the interrogation -- should this be "has enslaved"?
    Yes. Changed. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "By the time of Martha Corey's trial...": the reader doesn't know who Martha Corey is. Similarly a word or two introducing Judith Hubbard would be good: "A neighbour, Judith Hubbard" or whatever is appropriate.
    I described both as "Salem resident" because neither are given much characterization. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think "spectral evidence" is a little too obscure to go unglossed in the article, even with a link.
    Reworded to more clearly connect that phrase to the testimony described earlier in the paragraph. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Neal connected the disparate mid-17th-century stories of Quaker dissenters Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer of Boston into 1692 Salem": "into" seems the wrong connector here. Neal connected the mid-17th-century stories with the story of the Salem trials, so just "with" might be better; or perhaps more explicitly mention the witch trials "...with the story of the 1692 Salem witch trials". And given that this is already somewhat apparent to the reader, and the point is the interpretation given in the next sentence, it might be better to join the sentences: "Neal's connection of the disparate mid-17th-century stories of Quaker dissenters Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer of Boston with the story of the 1692 Salem witch trials is interpreted as a critique..." even though that leads to a fairly long sentence.
    Swapped "into" for "with" as recommended. I see the potential to connect those two sentences, but I think that is too much information for one sentence, so I'd like to leave it as two. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Neal's desire to nationalistically portray them": suggest "Neal's nationalistic [or perhaps just nationalist] desire to portray them".
    Accepted! Done. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "intrinsic to the creation of a new legal system that abandons common law through codification": I see that the novel is a critique of common law, and I see that the American literary nationalism movement would be a natural ally for a movement to create a separate legal tradition, but "intrinsic to the creation of" seems a stronger phrase that I'm not sure how to interpret. Does Neal mean that the literary was actually a prerequisite for the legal change? Or just that the two movements were prompted by the same republican sentiment, and their motivations were not separable from each other?
    The latter. I swapped "intrinsic" for "deeply connected". Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • You have past tense for some scholars' comments ("Seelye felt that") and historic present for others ("David J. Carlson and Fritz Fleischmann feel"); they should be consistent.
    I do! Should be all present tense now. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "both books represented a broader textual search for a national American identity": "textual search" is a bit compressed; if I understand the intended meaning correctly, could we make this something like "were examples of a broader search, carried on the literature of the period, for"? If Seelye is only referring to these two books, and not referring to other examples in the literature of the time, I don't understand this.
    Swapped "textual" for "literary". I agree that the former is a little too academic for Wikipedia. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think any change is necessary to the article, unless the sources comment on it, but I was interested to see "thee will" in the stichomythic quote box. If I'm not mistaken, normal usage would be "thou wilt". Do you know if the usage was different in either Neal's time or the 17th century, or if perhaps this was a mistake by Neal? Or am I wrong about this?
    Ha! I really don't know. I'm pretty sure that Neal's use of "thee will" is not discussed in any of the listed sources. But searching for the phrase in the book, it seems Neal used that exact wording in 9 different places. I really don't know if either is considered correct or incorrect. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I wonder if Quaker usage differed from the standard. Our article on thou and thee is unambiguous and even gives "thou wilt" as an example. As the sources don't comment there's nothing we can say, but I'll leave this unstruck in case other reviews have a comment. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:37, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Like the novel it precedes, the "Unpublished Preface" rejects precedent": can we avoid "precede" and "precedent" so close together?
    Certainly. I swapped "it precedes" for "itself". Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Was Neal's self-review in The Yankee anonymous, or pseudonymous? He speaks of himself in the third person and I wondered if that was because his identity was concealed for the review.
    He signed his self-review, so I added "Speaking of himself in the third person," to clarify. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:02, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie: Awesome. Thank you so much for the comments and for making a bunch of copy edits yourself. I believe I have addressed all your comments. Let me know if you think anything needs more attention. Dugan Murphy (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support. The changes look good. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:37, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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