Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700 1830

Elizabeth Eger is a Research Fellow at the Eighteenth-Century Centre at Warwick University. She is the editor of the Selected Works of Elizabeth Montagu (1999) and a contributor to Women's Poetry in the Enlightenment (1999) and The Cambridge Guide to Women's Literature. Charlotte Grant is Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Jesus College, Cambridge. She writes and teaches in the area of Eighteenth Century Studies. Cliona O Gallchoir is a Lecturer in the department of English as University College Cork. She is co-editor with Susan Manly of Volume 9 of Novels and Selected Works of Maria Edgeworth. Penny Warbuton has worked as a book reviewer, archivist and university teacher. She is currently finalising her doctoral thesis Women Writing on Economics: Aesthetics, Writing and the Economy, 1760-1833

In this book, an international team of specialists examines the dynamic relation between women and the public sphere between 1700 and 1830. Drawing on literary and visual evidence, contributors highlight the range of women's cultural activity during the period, from historiography, publishing and translation to philosophical and political writing. Women, Writing and the Public Sphere examines the history of the public spaces women occupied, raising questions of scandal and display, improvement, virtue and morality in the context of the production and consumption of culture by women in eighteenth-century England.

List of illustrators; List of contributors; Preface and acknowledgements; Introduction: women, writing and representation Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó'Gallchoir and Penny Warburton; Part I. Women in the Public Eye: 1. Coffee-women, The Spectator and the public sphere in the early eighteenth century Markman Ellis; 2. Misses, murderesses and magdalens: women in the public eye Caroline Gonda; Part II. Consuming Arts: 3. The choice of Hercules: the polite arts and 'female excellence' in eighteenth-century London Charlotte Grant; 4. Representing culture: The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (1779) Elizabeth Eger; 5. A moral purchase: femininity, commerce and abolition, 1788¿1792 Kate Davies; Part III. Learned Ladies: From Bluestockings to Cosmopolitan Intellectuals: 6. Bluestocking feminism Gary Kelly; 7. Catharine Macaulay: history, republicanism and the public sphere Susan Wiseman; 8. Gender, nation and revolution: Maria Edgeworth and Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis Clíona Ó Gallchoir; 9. Salons, Alps and Cordilleras: Helen Maria Williams, Alex von Humboldt and the discourse of Romantic travel Nigel Leask; Part IV. The Female Subject: 10. The most public sphere of all: the family Sylvana Tomaselli; 11. Theorising public opinion: Elizabeth Hamilton's model of self, sympathy and society Penny Warburton; 12. Intimate connections: scandalous memoirs and epistolary indiscretion Mary Jacobus; Bibliography; Index.