Re-reading the Augustan Age

Abstract

As pointed out earlier, women writers from the Restoration and Enlightenment have been consistently marginalized from the English literary canon. Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (1957) firmly located Defoe's Robinson Crusoe as the precursor of the English novel. The woman writer's contribution to the genre's rise and evolution has only recently been acknowledged. Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and her epistolary tale Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister (1683), for instance, were pioneers in form and were composed well before Richardson's sentimental novels in the same mode appeared on the scene. The erotic fiction of Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess (1719) had four editions in the first four years. Haywood was a prolific author and had a publication every year in the 1720–30 decade except in 1720 and 1721. In fact, she produced 35% of the total output by women in this period. She produced ten novels in 1725 alone. Psychological realism, often attributed to Defoe, makes its appearance in women writers like Jane Barker. Barker's Loves Intrigues: Or, The History of the Amours of Bosvil and Galesia (1713) is a first-person narrative about Galesia and her love life. Recent studies have demonstrated how the 18 th century English novel was firmly located in the sexual and gender politics of the age. The main question asked by feminist historians and thinkers is this: why is the contribution of women writers to the development of the novel – to mention only one genre – consistently neglected in literary history?