This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life
writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during
the long eighteenth century.
Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception
histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund
old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld,
Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch
Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved
acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary
gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions.
Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old
age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing
among several different paths. These included receding into the
background as authors of "classics," adapting to grandmotherly
standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized
conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new
categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers
affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and
in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging,
Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her subjects and
explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later
works.
In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy
of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution
in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to
acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory
in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies.
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