Women’s Writing, 1660-1830

This book is about mapping the future of eighteenth-century women’s writing and feminist literary history, in an academic culture that is not shy of declaring their obsolescence. It asks: what can or should unite us as scholars devoted to the recovery and study of women’s literary history in an era of big data, on the one hand, and ever more narrowly defined specialization, on the other? Leading scholars from the UK and US answer this question in thought-provoking, cross-disciplinary and often polemical essays. Contributors attend to the achievements of eighteenth-century women writers and the scholars who have devoted their lives to them, and map new directions for the advancement of research in the area. They collectively argue that eighteenth-century women’s literary history has a future, and that feminism was, and always should be, at its heart.  

Featuring a Preface by Isobel Grundy, and a Postscript by Cora Kaplan.

Introduction: Feminisms, Fictions, Futures: Women’s Writing 1660–1830; Jennie Batchelor and Gillian Dow.- 1. Passing Judgement: The Place of the Aesthetic in Feminist Literary History; Ros Ballaster.- 2. Free Market Feminism? The Political Economy of Women’s Writing; E.J. Clery.- 3. Feminist Literary History: How Do We Know We’ve Won?; Katherine Binhammer.- 4. Anon, Pseud and ‘By a Lady’: The Spectre of Anonymity in Women’s Literary History; Jennie Batchelor.- 5. Authorial Performances: Actress, Author, Critic; Elaine McGirr.- 6. Pay, Professionalization and Probable Dominance? Women Writers and the Children’s Book Trade; M.O. Grenby.- 7. ‘There Are Numbers of Very Choice Books’: Book Ownership and the Circulation of Women’s Texts, 1680–98; Marie-Louise Coolahan and Mark Empey.- 8. Gender and the Material Turn; Chloe Wigston Smith.- 9. Archipelagic Literary History: Eighteenth-Century Poetryfrom Ireland, Scotland and Wales; Sarah Prescott.- 10. The ‘Biographical Impulse’ and Pan-European Women’s Writing; Gillian Dow.- Postscript; Cora Kaplan.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.