This collection of twelve critical essays on women's poetry of the eighteenth century and enlightenment is the first to range widely over individual poets and to undertake a comprehensive exploration of their work. Experiment with genre and form, the poetics of the body, the politics of gender, revolutionary critique, and patronage, are themes of the collection, which includes discussions of the distinctive projects of Mary Leapor, Ann Yearsley, Helen Maria Williams, Joanna Baillie, Charlotte Smith, Anna Barbauld and Lucy Aikin.

An Ancient Collection Reimagined Composed around the Buddha’s lifetime, the Therigatha (“Verses of the Elder Nuns”) contains the poems of the first Buddhist women: princesses and courtesans, tired wives of arranged marriages and the desperately in love, those born into limitless wealth and those born with nothing at all. The original authors of the Therigatha were women from every kind of background, but they all shared a deep-seated desire for awakening and liberation. In The First Free Women, Matty Weingast has reimagined this ancient collection and created a contemporary and radical adaptation that takes the essence of each poem and highlights the struggles and doubts, as well as the strength, perseverance, and profound compassion, embodied by these courageous women.

Revises established understandings of British women writers' contributions to Enlightenment narratives of social and historical progress Drawing on original archival research, A Feminine Enlightenment argues that women writers shaped Enlightenment conversations regarding the role of sentiment and gender in the civilizing process. By reading women's literature alongside history and philosophy and moving between the eighteenth century and Romantic era, JoEllen DeLucia challenges conventional historical and generic boundaries. Beginning with Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), she tracks discussions of "e;women's progress"e; from the rarified atmosphere of mid-eighteenth-century Bluestocking salons and the masculine domain of the Scottish university system to the popular Minerva Press novels of the early nineteenth century. Ultimately, this study positions feminine genres such as the Gothic romance and Bluestocking poetry, usually seen as outliers in a masculine Age of Reason, as essential to understanding emotion's role in Enlightenment narratives of progress. The effect of this study is twofold: to show how developments in women's literature reflected and engaged with Enlightenment discussions of emotion, sentiment, and commercial and imperial expansion; and to provide new literary and historical contexts for contemporary conversations that continue to use "e;women's progress"e; to assign cultures and societies around the globe a place in universalizing schemas of development.Key FeaturesEstablishes the centrality of gender to Enlightenment discussions of social and historical development Uncovers evidence of women writers' participation in the Scottish Enlightenment's theorization of sentiment and historical progressProvides literary and historical background for ongoing discussions of the history of emotion and the study of affect

This studyargues that female networks of conversation, correspondenceand patronage formed the foundation for women's work in the 'higher' realms of Shakespeare criticism and poetry. Eger traces the transition between Enlightenment and Romantic culture, arguing for the relevance of rational argument in the history of women's writing.

charts - for the first time - the otherwise invisible tradition of women's epic." "The Female Homer provides a powerful research tool through its checklist of women's epic poems, and a vital starting point for investigations and new conversations in the field. For scholars in Comparative Literature and English Studies who are already at work on questions of women's epic, the recovery of women's texts, and the place of women's writings within traditionally masculine canons of literature, The Female Homer sketches and consolidates the field. Beyond these specialists, scholars in all fields of literary study, once they clear their initial shock at the existence of women's epic, will be engaged by the kinds of texts these women poets have produced. Beyond an academic audience, the wider reading public will find in this accessibly written volume a welcome introduction to an unknown range of texts and authors. This approach also makes it a suitable textbook for courses in epic, in --

An international team of specialists examine the dynamic relation between women and the public sphere.

The first collection to make a comprehensive study of nineteenth-century women's poetry from late Romantic to late Victorian 'new woman' writers. Eighteen essays consider the gendered codes and genres developed by sophisticated poets. The feminine subject and marketing, a woman's tradition, lesbian desire, war, race, colonial experience, religion and science are themes of the collection, featuring, as well as the familiar Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, other poets such as 'L.E.L.', Felicia Hemans, Amy Levy and Augusta Webster.