Synopses & Reviews
Women and Literature in Britain, 1700-1800 is unique in providing an authoritative, up-to-date overview of eighteenth-century women's writing and its contexts. The contributors are well-known feminist literary critics, cultural historians and historians of publishing. They discuss the construction of women, and women's writing across a wide range of genres, including essays on ideas of femininity, women and race, changing family structures, women and the law, and women as publishers and as readers. This book will be an invaluable resource both for students and experts in the field.
Review
"This book will be used both as an undergraduate introductory text and resource (it includes an extensive chronology and a guide to further reading) and as a source for further scholarly research." Choice"...energizing, engaging, and an excellent roundup of perspectives on the state of research on women and their relationships to literature in the eighteenth century." Eighteenth-Century Studies"This book will be used both as an undergraduate introductory text and resource (it includes an extensive chronology and a guide to further reading) and as a source for further scholarly research." Choice
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 306-310) and index.
Table of Contents
Writings on education and conduct: arguments for female improvement / Kathryn Sutherland -- Eighteenth-century femininity: "a supposed sexual character" / Harriet Guest -- Women and race: "a difference of complexion" / Felicity A. Nussbaum -- Women's status as legal and civic subjects: "a worse condition than slavery itself" / Gillian Skinner -- Women in families: the great disinheritance / Ruth Perry -- Women and the business of print / Paula McDowell -- Women readers: a case study / Jon Fergus -- (Re)discovering women's texts / Isobel Grundy -- Women and the rise of the novel: sexual prescripts / Ros Ballaster -- Women poets of the eighteenth century / Margaret Anne Doody -- Women and the theatre / Angela J. Smallwood -- Women and popular culture: gender, cultural dynamics, and popular prints / Diane Dugaw -- Varieties of women's writing / Clare Brant.