British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism, 1789-1832

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Mary A. Waters

      Pages 1-23

3. “Forms scientific and established”: The Critical Preface, the Canon, and the Woman Critic

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 25-27

      PDF

   2. The British Common Reader: Critical Prefaces by Anna Letitia Barbauld

      • Mary A. Waters

      Pages 28-56

   3. Renouncing the Forms: The Case of Elizabeth Inchbald

      • Mary A. Waters

      Pages 57-81

4. “Fearful ascendency”: Women Periodical Literary Reviewers

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 83-85

      PDF

   2. “The first of a new genus —”: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, and The Analytical Review

      • Mary A. Waters

      Pages 86-120

   3. Periodicals and Middle-Class Dissent: Anna Letitia Barbauld and Elizabeth Moody at the Monthly Review

      • Mary A. Waters

      Pages 121-150

   4. The Next Generation: Harriet Martineau’s Literary Reviews for the Monthly Repository

      • Mary A. Waters

      Pages 151-177

5. Back Matter

   Pages 178-225

   PDF

This book examines professional literary criticism by Romantic-era British women to reveal that, while developing a conscious professionalism, women literary critics helped to shape the aesthetic models that defined Romantic-era literary values and made the British literary heritage a source of national pride. Women critics understood the contested nature of aesthetics and the public implications of aesthetic values on questions such as morality, both public and private, the nation's cultural heritage, even the essential qualities of Britishness itself.

• aesthetics
• bibliography
• cultural heritage
• knowledge
• literary criticism
• model
• morality
• nature
• oral discourse
• Romanticism
• women
• British and Irish Literature

'This is a remarkable, landmark study in the field of literary scholarship. There has never been anything quite like it, and what it has to offer is badly needed. Not only will it forever alter the way we see the careers of the particular women reviewers under discussion (Anna Letitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Inchbald, Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Moody and Harriet Martineau), but, more significantly, it will transform the way we view the history and development of literary criticism in England... This important contribution to the field of English Romantic studies brings to the fore the collaborative nature of literary production.' - Paula R. Feldman, C. Wallace Martin Professor of English, University of South Carolina

• Wichita State University, USA

  Mary A. Waters

MARY A. WATERS is Assistant Professor at Wichita State University, Kansas, USA. Her previous publications include articles in Eighteenth-Century Studies and Nineteenth-Century Studies.

Policies and ethics