British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670–1820 by Devoney Looser

Abstract

73 changed in the text numbers, and 182– 247 are omitted. Mr. Primer’s work shows clearly which maxims Behn omitted , which she combined, and which she mistranslated. The reader is given the means to measure Behn’s accuracy as a translator, at least of La Rochefoucauld, along with the opportunity to speculate on what Behn was doing and why. This raises more questions than answers. Mr. Primer provides a good Introduction , coveringbrieflythelivesandliterary careers of La Rochefoucauld and Behn, the editions Behn used, a study of Behn’s idiosyncrasies as translator, a description of the maxims that Behn omitted, combined , or otherwise altered, and a bibliographic description of the Miscellany,at the end of which Behn published Seneca Unmasqued. In addition toexcellentfootnotes and the excerpts from Behn’s ‘‘Essay on Translated Prose,’’ Mr. Primer presentsinparallelthepassagesthatBehn translated from the IntroductionbyChappelle -Bessé to the first edition that La Rochefoucauld authorized of his Maximes (1665), showing that part of what appeared to be original with Behn was little more than translation from a French critic . Also offered in Appendices are the maxims that Behn did not translate,along with translations; why they were omitted is not clear. Finally, a reliable correlation of the maxim numbers between Behn’s edition and La Rochefoucauld’s, and a thematic index to the maxims conclude the edition. Mary Ann O’Donnell Manhattan College DEVONEY LOOSER. British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670– 1820. Baltimoreand London:JohnsHopkins , 2000. Pp. 272. $49.95. It turns out women have been making histories all along. We are the blind ones, stubbornly persuaded that history is largely a masculine province, and still reliant on the nineteenth-century classification of history as scientific in method and objective in tone: this is Ms. Looser’s persuasive argument. Her book’s virtue lies not in its discussion of an acknowledged historian like Catharine Macaulay or even of the memoirist Lucy Hutchinson , but in its insistence on a documented tradition of women penning histories in the long eighteenth century and, even more importantly, engaging in issues of historiography, especially at a time when the very shape of history was in flux. The result is that we find historians in rather unlikely places: apart from the chapters on Hutchinson and Macaulay, Ms. Looser’s inclusions read more like a veritable ‘‘who’s who’’of women known for their work in other genres (LadyMary Wortley Montagu and HesterLynchPiozzi , both better known for their epistolary correspondences and travelogues, and Charlotte Lennox and Jane Austen for their fiction). Reading them as historians, then, requires a rereading of their literary contributions, and here Ms. Looser proves most compelling. For one, she reminds us that all these women wrote histories . Montagu wrote and thendestroyed the self-titled ‘‘The History of My Own Time’’; Piozzi prized Retrospection, a world history that proved a resounding critical failure, above all her successes; Lennox translated histories and attempted to publish by subscription ‘‘The Age of Queen Elizabeth’’; and Austen, in her youth, collaborated with her sister on the satirical History of England. More importantly , these women found the genre accommodating of their diverse literary agendas and not unresponsive to their interests . 74 Take Montagu’s ‘‘Turkish Embassy Letters,’’for example. Whether read asan amusing ‘‘trifle,’’ an indicative trend of the period, or a politically charged document , as is the current tendency, what remains uncommented on, according to Ms. Looser, is how this work functions as history. What obscures the point for us is that Montagu recognized no strict division between the romantic and historical , our own legacy from the nineteenth century. Hence, we read its romantic elements as mere amusement or fodder for our own political agendas, and fail to note what mattered to Montagu herself: how in these letters she self-consciously positions herself as a writer of women’s history . The same misreading appliestoHutchinson . Mistaking thepersonalanddomestic elements of this memoir as novelistic (once again, a trend that takes hold in the nineteenth century), we fail to recognize their consistency with the providential aims of Restoration histories.Hutchinson then is not an early novelist; rather, her attention to personality is a sign of the character-driven nature of seventeenthcentury historical narrative. What we...