The Matrimonial Trap: Eighteenth-Century Women Writers Redefine Marriageby Laura E. ThomasonThe Matrimonial Trap: Eighteenth-Century Women Writers Redefine Marriageby Laura E. Thomason Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; and Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. x+208pp. US$80. ISBN 978-1-61148-526-4.

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 202-204
Author(s):  
Norma Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century

The gender politics of ‘bluestocking philosophy’

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Ann Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social System ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Public Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Single Voice

This chapter discusses the gender politics of ‘bluestocking philosophy’. The idea of a single, unified conceptualization of what constituted a bluestocking and what was understood as a bluestocking philosophy is somewhat misleading, as the idea of a single voice emerging from this group is almost a contradiction in terms. What can be identified is who made up the bluestocking circles and what they aspired to be and to do. Elizabeth Montagu was a central figure in the development of bluestocking circles and, along with Elizabeth Vesey and Frances Boscawen, helped to forge a public identity for women public intellectuals through Montagu's own scholarship as well as her support for other women writers. The early bluestocking circles were not established as a vehicle for promoting equity or women's rights, or even rights of citizenship. However, they played an important role in the second half of the 18th century in entrenching cultural and social transformation into the social system. In addition, they ‘played a crucial role in a widening and defining of women's social roles in the eighteenth century’.

Going Public

2013 ◽  
pp. 102-145
Author(s):  
Natalie Naimark-Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Going Public ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Writing Culture ◽  
Women Of Letters

This chapter investigates the literary activity of enlightened Jewish women, discussing their attitudes towards authorship and what the crucial decision to publish their writings meant in the context of their time. As female authors, these Jewish women of letters were part of a broader phenomenon in contemporary Europe. Throughout the eighteenth century and especially towards its end, a female writing culture was developing simultaneously in various lands. Although the pace and nature of this literary expansion differed from place to place, depending on specific local conditions, countries including Germany, France, and England all saw a dramatic increase in the number of women active in the field of literature. The chapter then looks at the literary careers and the attitudes towards publishing of four of the Jewish women writers from the period, namely Esther Gad, Dorothea Mendelssohn, Rahel Levin, and Sara Meyer.

scholarly journals Visualising Female Authorship. Author Portraits and the Representation of Female Literary Authority in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

Quaerendo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 283-314
Author(s):  
Lieke van Deinsen
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Literary Authority ◽  
Fine Line ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Male Dominated

Abstract This article discusses printed author portraits of women writers as vehicles of public image in the male-dominated eighteenth-century book market. It shows how Dutch women writers responded to the growing demand for author portraits and used their portrait engravings to shape their public image. It proved to be a fine line between showcasing literary aspirations and maintaining female modesty.

Teaching Eighteenth-Century Women Writers

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Laura Runge
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century

Self-portraiture

2019 ◽  
pp. 437-456
Author(s):  
Louise Curran
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Jonathan Swift ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Voice

This chapter explores the image of women looking at themselves and being observed by others in a significant body of satirical writing by women writers in the 1730s, 1740s, and 1750s. Though Jonathan Swift famously observed that satire ‘is a sort of Glass, wherein Beholders do generally discover every body’s Face but their Own’, these women did the opposite, often unflinchingly so, producing humane reflections on their personal appearances, and on their selves. Self-knowledge through conversation, either with oneself or with others, is a motif of eighteenth-century moral philosophy, and this kind of introspection is replicated throughout satirical verse, particularly that by women. Conversation takes place through the medium of the interlocutor in verse epistles; as answers to previous poems; through voicing the characters of different people; as the voice of the poet within the poem; and as translation and imitation.

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