The Cambridge Companion to Women's Writing in the Romantic Period Cambridge Companions to Literature Series

The Romantic period saw the first generations of professional women writers flourish in Great Britain. Literary history is only now giving them the attention they deserve, for the quality of their writings and for their popularity in their own time. This collection of new essays by leading scholars explores the challenges and achievements of this fascinating set of women writers, including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ann Radcliffe, Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and Mary Shelley alongside many lesser-known female authors writing and publishing during this period. Chapters consider major literary genres, including poetry, fiction, drama, travel writing, histories, essays, and political writing, as well as topics such as globalization, colonialism, feminism, economics, families, sexualities, aging, and war. The volume shows how gender intersected with other aspects of identity and with cultural concerns that then shaped the work of authors, critics, and readers.

Chronology; Introduction; 1. Poetry Stephen C. Behrendt; 2. Fiction Anthony Mandal; 3. Drama Catherine Burroughs; 4. Essays and political writing Anne Mellor; 5. The gothic Angela Wright; 6. Travel writing Elizabeth A. Fay; 7. History writing and antiquarianism Crystal Lake; 8. Writing in wartime Catherine Ingrassia; 9. Enlightenment feminism and the bluestocking legacy Caroline Franklin; 10. The global context Deirdre Coleman; 11. Social, familial, and literary networks Julie A. Carlson; 12. The economics of female authorship Jacqueline M. Labbe; 13. Age and aging Devoney Looser; 14. National identities and regional affiliations Fiona Price; 15. Sexualities Jillian Heydt-Stevenson; Guide to further reading.

Devoney Looser is Professor of English, Department of English, Arizona State University. She is author of Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750–1850 (2008) and British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670–1820 (2000), co-editor of Generations: Academic Feminists in Dialogue (1997) and editor of Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism (1995).