Literature by Women

Showing 169–192 of 202 results

  • The Tragedy of Mariam

    First published in 1613, The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is probably the first play in English known to have been authored…

  • A New Woman Reader

    In the 1890s one phrase above all stood as shorthand for the various controversies over gender that swirled throughout the period: “the New Woman.” In…

  • Mrs. Dalloway – Encore Edition

    “Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on…

  • To The Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is now generally recognized as the author of two of the twentieth century’s greatest literary works, To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway,…

  • Evelina

    The reputation of Frances Burney (1752-1840) was largely established with her first novel, Evelina. Published anonymously in 1778, it is an epistolary account of a…

  • Love in Excess – Second Edition

    Eliza Haywood (1693-1756) was one of the most successful writers of her time; indeed, the two most popular English novels in the early eighteenth-century were…

  • Memoirs of Modern Philosophers

    When the Anti-Jacobin Review described Memoirs of Modern Philosophers in 1800 as “the first novel of the day” and as proof that “all the female…

  • Mary Barton

    Mary Barton first appeared in 1848, and has since become one of the best known novels on the ‘condition of England,’ part of a nineteenth-century…

  • Augusta Webster: Portraits and Other Poems

    Augusta Webster was very widely praised in her own time—Christina Rossetti thought her “by far the most formidable” woman poet. Her work has again come…

  • East Lynne

    Lady Isabel Carlyle, a beautiful and refined young woman, leaves her hard-working but neglectful lawyer-husband and her infant children to elope with an aristocratic suitor.…

  • Memoirs of Emma Courtney

    In November of 1795, after William Godwin requested a sketch of Mary Hays’ life, she arrived at the idea of Memoirs of Emma Courtney. Godwin…

  • Paper Bodies

    Margaret Cavendish was one of the most subversive and entertaining writers of the seventeenth century. She invented new genres, challenged gender roles, and critiqued the…

  • Mary Robinson: Selected Poems

    Mary Robinson’s work has begun again to assume a central place in discussions of Romanticism. A writer of the 1790’s—a decade which saw the birth…

  • The Adventures of Eovaai

    Haywood’s novel is the story of the beautiful Princess Eovaai. Groomed for the throne by her father, who teaches her Lockean notions of liberty, she…

  • The Adventures of Rivella

    Delarivier Manley is increasingly coming to the fore as a prominent figure in early eighteenth-century fiction, and The Adventures of Rivella in particular has been…

  • Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah

    In Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, Elizabeth Hamilton engages directly with the major issues of her day, from colonialism and the “New…

  • The Rover – Second Edition

    Increasingly Aphra Behn—the first woman professional writer—is also regarded as one of the most important writers of the 17th century. The Rover, her most famous…

  • Secresy – Second Edition

    Secresy was Eliza Fenwick’s only work for adults—a fact that may help to explain why this extraordinary novel has been so thoroughly overlooked. On one…

  • The Victim of Prejudice – Second Edition

    Mary Hays was an outspoken Radical intellectual in the turbulent decade of the 1790’s. She argued vehemently for the need to recognise the moral and…

  • Valperga

    Originally published in 1823, Valperga is probably Mary Shelley’s most neglected novel. Set in 14th-century Italy, it represents a merging of historical romance and the…

  • Persuasion

    For her last novel’s plot, Austen returns to the tensions of inheritance; but the once satisfactory solution—security on a landed estate—no longer applies. Here, Anne,…

  • The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless

    Prolific even by eighteenth-century standards, Eliza Haywood was the author of more than eighty titles, including short fiction, novels, periodicals, plays, poetry, and a political…

  • Aurora Floyd

    Aurora Floyd is one of the leading novels in the genre known as ‘sensation fiction’—a tradition in which the key texts include Wilkie Collins’s The…

  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon – Selected Writings

    The work of ‘L.E.L.’ began to be published when she was only seventeen, and in her early twenties Landon had already achieved considerable renown. As…