The Pen and the People
The Pen and the People

Author: Susan Whyman

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0191615854

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Susan Whyman draws on a hidden world of previously unknown letter writers to explore bold new ideas about the history of writing, reading and the novel. Capturing actual dialogues of people discussing subjects as diverse as marriage, poverty, poetry, and the emotional lives of servants, The Pen and the People will be enjoyed by everyone interested in history, literature, and the intimate experiences of ordinary people. Based on over thirty-five previously unknown letter collections, it tells the stories of workers and the middling sort - a Yorkshire bridle maker, a female domestic servant, a Derbyshire wheelwright, an untrained woman writing poetry and short stories, as well as merchants and their families. Their ordinary backgrounds and extraordinary writings challenge accepted views that popular literacy was rare in England before 1800. This democratization of letter writing could never have occurred without the development of the Royal Mail. Drawing on new information gleaned from personal letters, Whyman reveals how the Post Office had altered the rhythms of daily life long before the nineteenth century. As the pen, the post, and the people became increasingly connected, so too were eighteenth-century society and culture slowly and subtly transformed.

Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850
Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850

Author: Devoney Looser

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2008-08-01

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0801887054

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This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century. Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions. Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of "classics," adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her Subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works. In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies.

The "other" Eighteenth Century
The

Author: Robert W. Uphaus

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 9780870134388

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This anthology of the works of 22 women authors aims to reclaim the tradition of women's writing in England during the period, and helps to restore this tradition to its rightful place in the present-day canon of late 17th- and 18th-century English literature. This book contains the complete works by Mary Astell, Joanna Baillie, Anna Barbauld, Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Carter, Mary Chudleigh, Jane Collier, Hannah Cowley, Judith Drake, Maria Edgworth, Sarah Egerton, Margaret Fell, Anne Finch, Mary Wortley Montagu, Hannah More, Sarah Pennington, Katherine Philips, Elizabeth Rowe, Rachel Russell, Catherine Talbot, Elizabeth Tallot, and Mary Wollstonecroft.

English Masculinities, 1660-1800
English Masculinities, 1660-1800

Author: Tim Hitchcock

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-30

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1317882490

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This collection of specially commissioned essays provides the first social history of masculinity in the ‘long eighteenth century’. Drawing on diaries, court records and prescriptive literature, it explores the different identities of late Stuart and Georgian men. The heterosexual fop, the homosexual, the polite gentleman, the blackguard, the man of religion, the reader of erotica and the violent aggressor are each examined here, and in the process a new and increasingly important field of historical enquiry is opened up to the non-specialist reader. The book opens with a substantial introduction by the Editors. This provides readers with a detailed context for the chapters which follow. The core of the book is divided into four main parts looking at sociability, virtue and friendship, violence, and sexuality. Within this framework each chapter forms a self-contained unit, with its own methodology, sources and argument. The chapters address issues such as the correlations between masculinity and Protestantism; masculinity, Englishness and taciturnity; and the impact of changing representations of homosexual desire on the social organisation of heterosexuality. Misogyny, James Boswell's self-presentation, the literary and metaphorical representation of the body, the roles of gossip and violence in men's lives, are each addressed in individual chapters. The volume is concluded by a wide-ranging synoptic essay by John Tosh, which sets a new agenda for the history of masculinity. An extensive guide to further reading is also provided. Designed for students, academics and the general reader alike, this collection of essays provides a wide-ranging and accessible framework within which to understand eighteenth-century men. Because of the variety of approaches and conclusions it contains, and because this is the first attempt to bring together a comprehensive set of writings on the social history of eighteenth-century masculinity, this volume does something quite new. It de-centres and problematises the male ‘standard’ and explores the complex and disparate masculinites enacted by the men of this period. This will be essential reading for anyone interested in eighteenth-century British social history.

The Sign of Angellica
The Sign of Angellica

Author: Janet Todd

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780231071352

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Describes the entry of women into literature as a profession. Looks at over a century of women's writings, from Behn to mary Wollstonecraft.

Early Women Writers
Early Women Writers

Author: Anita Pacheco

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1317884442

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The last twenty years have witnessed the rediscovery of a large number of women writers of the early modern period. This process of recovery has had a major impact on early modern studies for, by beginning to restore women to the history of the period, it provides new insight into the formative years of the modern era. This collection amply demonstrates the diversity as well as the literary and historical significance of early women's writing. It brings together studies by an impressive range of critics, including Elaine Hobby, Catherine Gallagher, Jane Spencer and Laura Brown, and examines the major works of five of the most important women writers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn and Anne Finch. The range of authors it covers, and the challenging critical work it presents, make Early Women Writers: 1600-1720 essential reading for students of feminist theory, Women's Studies and Cultural Studies, as well as for all those interested in the history and literature of the early modern period.