Women and Literature in Britain, 1700–1800

This collection of essays, first published in 2000, brings together feminist critics, cultural historians and historians of publishing to provide a unique and up-to-date introduction to women's writing and its contexts in the eighteenth century. It was during this period that women began to contribute in significantly large numbers to a rapidly-expanding print culture. This volume documents the range and diversity of that contribution. It analyses the social, legal and ideological constructions of women which female writers had to negotiate, and it explores women's writing across a wide spectrum of genres - from fiction to broadside ballads, meditative poetry to confessional memoirs - as well as women's involvement as printers, sellers and purchasers of printed texts. An invaluable overview of women and literary culture in the period, Women and Literature in Britain, 1700–1800 is also an important contribution to our understanding of women's roles in the emergent public sphere of print.