SUSAN STAVES, A Literary History of Women's Writing in Britain, 1660-1789.

What is the place of women writers in literary history, and the history of women’s print media? Megan Peiser’s chapter answers these questions through the specific lens of Romantic women reviewers’ assessments of work by Romantic women novelists. The chapter begins by accounting for the difficulties of its approach. Since periodical voices are often collaborative, anonymous/pseudonymous and published serially they require readers to chase their commitment to these publications through multiple issues rather than declaring completeness and authority through a single accessible printing. The chapter proceeds with detailed accounts of the reviewing careers of Elizabeth Moody and Anna Barbauld and how they used their contingent presence as writers for the Monthly Review (1749–1844) to bolster the works of women writers of the period in a medium that has traditionally been perceived to be hostile to women’s writing.

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Susan Staves, A Literary History of Women's Writing in Britain, 1660–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). xi + 536 pp. £85.00 hardback. 0521858658.

Romanticism ◽

10.3366/e1354991x09000701 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 210-212

Author(s):

Jane Spencer

Keyword(s):

Literary History ◽

Women's Writing ◽

Cambridge University ◽

History Of ◽

Women’S Writing

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Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies as reclamatory fan work

Transformative Works and Cultures ◽

10.3983/twc.2017.01032 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 25 ◽

Author(s):

E. J. Nielsen

Keyword(s):

Women Writers ◽

Literary History ◽

Women's Writing ◽

Affect Theory ◽

Fan Studies ◽

Literary Production ◽

History Of ◽

And Gender ◽

The City ◽

Women’S Writing

In what ways can medieval texts be looked at as fan works? How might the rhetorical tools of fan studies or affect theory aid in further understanding of these texts? Likewise, can we use medieval understandings of literary production to look at modern fan works in order to complicate our contemporary ideas of authorship? Here I consider how Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies (Le Livre de la Cité des Dames) can be read as a reclamatory fan work addressing issues of representation and gender within both the texts it responds to and the larger culture within which the work is situated. Moreover, contextualizing de Pizan's work as fan work can help fan scholars by locating fan studies within a broader literary history. By reframing these earlier works of literature as part of a longer history of women's writing that also involves the works being done today within modalities of fan writing, and by reconsidering fan works as part of a historical continuum of women's writing, we, much as de Pizan herself did, create a theoretical space that historicizes, contextualizes, and indeed valorizes women writers of both fannish and nonfannish works.

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