Description
Book SynopsisReimagining Illness analyzes works by eighteenth-century British women writers alongside contemporaneous medical texts to argue that the circulation of medical knowledge in this period was not determined only by scientific rationalism and male expertise but rather shaped in part by women’s accounts of illness.
Trade Review“Putting women's literary works in conversation with the emergent discipline of medicine in the eighteenth century, Heather Meek explores the nuanced positions of women in relation to the often-competing medical discourses of the time. Never before has a study brought together eighteenth-century medical and women's literary texts in such a deep and extensive way. And the very fact that six major writers of the period can be studied together to demonstrate their serious engagement with what is typically understood as a male-dominated field indicates the immense value of this project.” Betty A. Schellenberg, Simon Fraser University and author of The Professionalization of Women Writers in Eighteenth-Century Britain
