Feminist studies of women's writing have tended to concentrate on writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. This book, which examines women novelists from Aphra Behn to Fanny Burney, is intended to redress the balance and to argue for the crucial importance of the 18th century to developing female identities in literature. The scope of the book is wide, with references ranging from Sarah Fielding, Ann Radcliffe and Mary Wollstonecraft to Jane Austen.