The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers

Abstract

This is an introduction to a wide range of British women's writing, from the earliest times to the present day. Ranging from Aphra Behn to Jeanette Winterson, Mary Wollstonecraft to Angela Carter, and including novelists, poets, playwrights, mystics, historians, diarists, letter writers, travel writers, scientists and translators. The entries cover the lives and works of some 400 writers. Each entry provides, in an A-Z sequence, details of a writer's contemporary critical reception, an evaluation of the significant features of her work and suggestions for further reading. The editor has selected a number of non-British writers, such as Sylvia Plath, who have had in aimportant influence on the British Literary scene. In addition, the guide features entries on such topics as sub-genres of women's writing and women's literary magazines and organizations. With cross-references to pseudonyms and maiden names, this book is intended to benefit all readers, scholars and students of women's writing. Joanne Shattock has also written Politics and Reviewers: The Edinburgh and the Quarterly in the Early Victorian Age and she has edited Dickens and Other Victorians.