Women writers: setting the terms of the debate

Abstract

This chapter explores the idea of the bluestockings and other women writers and how they were partially enfranchised by the expansion of print culture in the 18th century. Many of the bluestockings were published writers. Indeed, Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Carter showed that women could succeed in areas traditionally defined as areas where men excelled. Regardless of the success of these women writers — and probably as a result of it — at the start of the 19th century, the combined social and intellectual prominence of so many intelligent women was responded to with both resentment and disgust by many men. Nevertheless, the establishment of a recognized and significant presence of women in the ‘world of letters’ paved the way for a wide range of social and political commentary from women writers such as Jane Austen, George Eliot, and, later, Virginia Woolf.