BRITISH WOMEN'S WRITING IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: AUTHORSHIP, POLITICS AND HISTORY; ED. BY JENNIE BATCHELOR

A constellation of new essays on authorship, politics and history, British Women's Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century: Authorship, Politics and History presents the latest thinking about the debates raised by scholarship on gender and women's writing in the long eighteenth century. The essays highlight the ways in which women writers were key to the creation of the worlds of politics and letters in the period, reading the possibilities and limits of their engagement in those worlds as more complex and nuanced than earlier paradigms would suggest. Contributors include Norma Clarke, Janet Todd, Brian Southam , Harriet Guest, Isobel Grundy and Felicity Nussbaum. Published in association with the Chawton House Library, Hampshire - for more information, visit http://www.chawton.org/ Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 List of Figures......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 9 Notes on the Contributors......Page 10 Introduction......Page 14 Part I: Authorship and Print Culture......Page 30 1 Woman’s Work: Labour, Gender and Authorship in the Novels of Sarah Scott......Page 32 2 Anna Seward: Swan, Duckling or Goose?......Page 47 3 Spectral Texts in Mansfield Park......Page 61 4 Romantic Patronage: Mary Robinson and Coleridge Revisited......Page 75 5 Ivory Miniatures and the Art of Jane Austen......Page 89 6 Mansfield Park – What did Jane Austen Really Write? The Texts of 1814 and 1816......Page 101 Part II: History and Politics......Page 118 7 ‘Thou monarch of my Panting Soul’: Hobbesian Obligation and the Durability of Romance in Aphra Behn’s Love-Letters......Page 120 8 British Women Write the East after 1750: Revisiting a ‘Feminine’ Orient......Page 134 9 ‘Tied To Their Species By The Strongest Of All Relations’: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rewriting of Race as Sensibility......Page 153 10 Hannah More and Conservative Feminism......Page 171 11 Chawton House: Gathering Old Books for a New Library......Page 184 Index......Page 200 A constellation of essays on authorship, politics and history, British Women's Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century presents the latest thinking on gender and women's writing in the long eighteenth century, areas of work which have moved decisively from the periphery to the centre of eighteenth century studies. This collection highlights the ways in which women writers and their work were key to the worlds of politics and letters, integrated rather than separate from their central concerns, challenging past paradigms which too sharply divided - and gendered - public and private spheres and discourses. Representing new research and development in the field, these essays also serve as position papers, offering a provocative set of perspectives from which to explore the possibilities and limits of women's engagement with a wide range of public issues and debates from Aphra Behn to Hannah More and Mary Wollstonecraft. The collection features strategic contributions by leading international figures in the field such as Janet Todd, Isobel Grundy, Harriet Guest and Felicity Nussbaum, as well as those of rising younger scholars "A constellation of essays on authorship, politics and history, British Women's Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century presents the latest thinking on gender and women's writing in the long eighteenth century, areas of work which have moved decisively from the periphery to the centre of eighteenth-century studies. This collection highlights the ways in which women writers and their work were key to the worlds of politics and letters, integrated rather than separate from their central concerns, challenging past paradigms which too sharply divided - and gendered - public and private spheres and discourses."--Jacket