Description
Book SynopsisA collection of essays from feminist critics, each of which explores the history of the English novel, literature's place in cultural debate and women's studies. They begin with the fictions of the late 17th century and end with Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen.
Trade ReviewIn her preface, Backscheider makes high claims for this collection as the fruit of several lifetimes' feminist rereading of 18th-century fiction. These claims turn out to be justified by a truly extraordinary book. Choice These are valuable essays. Those who are interested in eighteenth-century English women, whether or not they are literary scholars, will find much to interest and stimulate them in this book. -- Barbara Brandon Schnorrenberg Albion Written to illustrate the maturity of a discipline, the essays in Revising Women demonstrate that women writers used fiction to participate in debates taking place in the public sphere. -- Nora Nachumi JASNA News The project that has engaged Paula Backscheider, one of the most prolific and prominent scholars in the field of eighteenth-century studies, is one that I believe is both heroic and potentially enduring: to reconcile the sort of thick description she favors-historical-biographical narratives that take full advantage of extant archive material and reveal richly detailed portraits of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British culture-with the lessons learned and opportunities afforded by recent literary theory. -- Richard C. Taylor NWSA Journal 2003 These essays reinforce the need to reevaluate female authorship of the eighteenth century. -- Rikki Noel-Williams Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 2003
Table of ContentsContents: The Novel's Gendered Space, Paula R. Backscheider * The Rise of Gender as Political Category, Paula R. Backscheider * Renegotiating the Gothic, Betty Rizzo * My Art Belongs to Daddy? Thomas Day, Maria Edgeworth, and the Pre-Texts of Belinda: Women Writers and Patriachal Authority Mitzi Myers * Jane Austen and the Culture of Circulating Libraries: The Construction of Female Literacy, Barbara M. Benedict
