The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters by Norma Clarke

The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters by Norma Clarke

If Aphra Benn is widely regarded as the first important woman writer in English, who was the second? In literary history, the eighteenth century belongs to men: Pope and Swift, Richardson and Fielding. Asked to name a woman, even the specialist stumbles. Jane Austen? She didn't publish until 1811. Aphra Benn herself? She died in 1869. The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters tells the remarkable but little-known story of women writers in the eighteenth century - of poets, critics, dramatists and scholars celebrated in their own time but all but forgotten by the beginning of the new century. Eliza Haywood, Catherine Cockburn, Elizabeth Elstob, Delarivier Manley, Elizabeth Rowe, Jane Barker, Elizabeth Thomas, Anna Seward... In a book which ranges from country house to Grub Street, Norma Clarke recovers these and other writers, establishes the reasons for their eclipse and discovers that a room of one's own in the eighteenth century was as likely to be a prison cell as a boudoir.

A book of subtlety and distinction, a reminder of just how far feminist literary scholarship has come * Guardian *
This book achieves far more than the rehabilitation of forgotten authors.. Instead, she investigates the broader mechanisms of fame, the formation of authorial personae, and the mysterious reasons why some names rise while others fall...This is a subtle, persuasive and engrossing study * Independent *
Inspirational...reveals a rich history of literary women who not only made a living from writing but were treated as the equals of their male peers... [It] should be a set textbook in English classes * Herald *

Educated at the Universities of Lancaster, London, and Kent, Norma Clarke is a Research Fellow in the English Department, Kingston University, and an Honorary Research Fellow in the History Department, Royal Holloway College, University of London. She is the author of five novels for children, numerous articles and several books, including Ambitious Heights (1990) and Dr Johnson's Women (2000).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780712664677
ISBN 10	071266467X
Title	The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters
Author	Norma Clarke
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Vintage
Year published	2004-05-27
Number of pages	400
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.