Literature by Women

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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,…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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.…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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,…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…