The sixth conference of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature, or IGEL, was held in August 1998 in Utrecht, Holland. The conference brought together a wide range of scholars concerned with understanding the place and role of literature in its social, historical, psychological, linguistic, and other dimensions, and who seek to advance our knowledge through empirical methods or more effective theoretical perspectives that may lead to empirical research. This special issue is based on papers from this conference, and represents just a small part of its rich variety.

The sixth conference of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature, or IGEL, was held in August 1998 in Utrecht, Holland. The conference brought together a wide range of scholars concerned with understanding the place and role of literature in its social, historical, psychological, linguistic, and other dimensions, and who seek to advance our knowledge through empirical methods or more effective theoretical perspectives that may lead to empirical research. This special issue is based on papers from this conference, and represents just a small part of its rich variety.

Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and Their Sisters is an unprecedented work that provides an in-depth analysis of the work of women novelists from the Romantic age, a period that has long been exclusively designated as the province of canonized male poets. Although there are many volumes on the works of Austen and Shelley, this collection is the first to consider these writers and others in the wider context of English fiction by women during the 1780s to 1830s. Collectively, the authors examine the works of nearly fifteen women novelists of the Romantic period whose works encompass the prevailing social and political realities of the time. They demonstrate that women writers were not following a specific formula to produce their creative works but were instead responding to an insatiable market for their imaginative and infinitely varied wares. A must-read for scholars of women's studies as well as 19th century British literature, Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and Their Sisters is sure to be an important resource for years to come.

This is the first major book in English on literary reading to be based on empirical methods. Moving the focus away from interpretation to the experience of literary texts, these studies demonstrate the role played by feeling in readers' responses, showing how feeling performs important functions during reading that cannot be accounted for by cognitive understanding. These studies not only reinvigorate the concept of literariness, they are also thoroughly inter-disciplinary, offering a coherent approach to literary reading that draws on literary theory, psychology, neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology. Several chapters help to introduce the empirical approach for students.

Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and Their Sisters is an unprecedented work that provides an in-depth analysis of the work of women novelists from the Romantic age, a period that has long been exclusively designated as the province of canonized male poets. Although there are many volumes on the works of Austen and Shelley, this collection is the first to consider these writers and others in the wider context of English fiction by women during the 1780s to 1830s. Collectively, the authors examine the works of nearly fifteen women novelists of the Romantic period whose works encompass the prevailing social and political realities of the time. They demonstrate that women writers were not following a specific formula to produce their creative works but were instead responding to an insatiable market for their imaginative and infinitely varied wares. A must-read for scholars of women's studies as well as 19th century British literature, Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and Their Sisters is sure to be an important resource for years to come.