The growing interest today in women's writing has led to a re-evaluation of British literary history, emphasizing the vitality of both well-known women writers and bringing to light the work of numerous hitherto forgotten figures. Assuming no previous knowledge on the part of readers, TheOxford Guide to British Women Writers provides in a single volume an accessible and stimulating beginner's guide to the widest range of British women's writing, from the earliest times to the present. Entries on some 400 writers from Aphra Behn to Jeanette Winterson and Mary Wollstonecraft to Barbara Cartland offer a brief outline of each woman's life, her major publications, contemporary critical reception, and an evaluation of significant features of her work, together with suggestions forfurther reading. The range of writers discussed includes novelists, poets, and playwrights, together with mystics, diarists, travel writers, scientists and translators. The editor has carefully selected a number of non-British writers such as Sylvia Plath, who have had an important influence on theBritish literary scene. In addition, the Guide features subject entries and cross-references to pseudonyms and maiden names, and provides an extensive general bibliography on women's writing. It also features entries on such topics as sub-genres of women's writing and women's literary magazines andorganizations. Concise, informative and well-organized, The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers will be an invaluable introduction for all readers and students of women's writing. In addition, the Guide features entries on such topics as sub-genres of women's writing and women's literary magazines andorganizations. With cross-references to pseudonyms and maiden names, this clear, concise book will be an invaluable source for all readers, scholars, and students of women's writing.

A guide to British women authors, their works, and the writing about them.

Reader's Guide Literature in English provides expert guidance to, and critical analysis of, the vast number of books available within the subject of English literature, from Anglo-Saxon times to the current American, British and Commonwealth scene. It is designed to help students, teachers and librarians choose the most appropriate books for research and study.

The 20th century witnessed several major cultural movements, including modernism, anti-modernism, and postmodernism. These and other means of understanding and perceiving the world shaped the literature of that era and, with the rise of feminism, resulted in a particularly rich body of literature by women writers. This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 58 British women writers of the 20th century. Some of these writers were born in England, while others, such as Katherine Mansfield and Doris Lessing, came from countries of the former Empire or Commonwealth. The volume also includes entries for women of color, such as Kamala Markandaya and Buchi Emecheta. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes an overview of the writer's background, an analysis of her works, an assessment of her achievements, and lists of primary and secondary sources. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.

"A welcome and necessary addition to the reference shelf". -- Washington Post Book World

Chosen by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Until recently, history writing has been understood as a male enclave from which women were restricted, particularly prior to the nineteenth century. The first book to look at British women writers and their contributions to historiography during the long eighteenth century, British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820, asks why, rather than writing history that included their own sex, some women of this period chose to write the same kind of history as men—one that marginalized or excluded women altogether. But as Devoney Looser demonstrates, although British women's historically informed writings were not necessarily feminist or even female-focused, they were intimately involved in debates over and conversations about the genre of history. Looser investigates the careers of Lucy Hutchinson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Charlotte Lennox, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Austen and shows how each of their contributions to historical discourse differed greatly as a result of political, historical, religious, class, and generic affiliations. Adding their contributions to accounts of early modern writing refutes the assumption that historiography was an exclusive men's club and that fiction was the only prose genre open to women.

The exuberant recovery from obscurity of scores of British women writers has prompted professors and publishers to revisit publication of women's writings. New curricular inclusion of these sometimes quirky, often passionate writers profoundly disrupts traditional pedagogical assumptions about what constitutes «literature». This book addresses this radically changed educational landscape, offering practical, proven teaching strategies for newly «recovered» writers, both in special-topics courses and in traditional teaching environments. Moreover, it addresses the institutional issues confronting feminist scholars who teach women writers in a variety of settings and the kinds of career-altering effects the decision to teach this material can have on junior and senior scholars alike. Collectively, these essays argue that teaching noncanonical women writers invigorates the curriculum as a whole, not only by introducing the voices of women writers, but by incorporating new genres, by asking new questions about readers' assumptions and aesthetic values, and by altering the power relations between teacher and student for the better.