eBook

Women Writers and the English Nation in the 1790s

Keane, Angela

2001,2000

Overview

Angela Keane addresses the work of five women writers of the 1790s and its problematic relationship with the canon of Romantic literature. Refining arguments that women's writing has been overlooked, Keane examines the more complex underpinnings and exclusionary effects of the English national literary tradition. The book explores the negotiations of literate, middle-class women such as Hannah More, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Helen Maria Williams and Ann Radcliffe with emergent ideas of national literary representation. As women were cast into the feminine, maternal role in Romantic national discourse, women like these who defined themselves in other terms found themselves exiled - sometimes literally - from the nation. These wandering women did not rest easily in the family-romance of Romantic nationalism nor could they be reconciled with the models of literary authorship that emerged in the 1790s.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: 18th century / England / English literature / English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism / English literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism / History / History and criticism / Nationalism in literature / Politics and literature / Politics and literature -- England -- History -- 18th century / Romanticism / Romanticism -- England -- History -- 18th century / Women and literature / Women and literature -- England -- History -- 18th century / Women authors
• ISBN: 9780521022408, 9780521773423, 0521773423, 0521022401