This collection of primary sources examines literary and cultural criticism over the long nineteenth century. The final volume 4 of 4 explores the subject of drama criticism written by women. This volume will be of great interest to students of literary history.

Focusing particularly on the critical reception of Jane Austen, Charlotte BrontA" and George Eliot, Joanne Wilkes offers in-depth examinations of reviews by eight female critics: Maria Jane Jewsbury, Sara Coleridge, Hannah Lawrance, Jane Williams, Julia Kavanagh, Anne Mozley, Margaret Oliphant and Mary Augusta Ward. What they wrote about women writers, and what their writings tell us about the critics' own sense of themselves as women writers, reveal the distinctive character of nineteenth-century women's contributions to literary history. Wilkes explores the different choices these critics, writing when women had to grapple with limiting assumptions about female intellectual capacities, made about how to disseminate their own writing. While several publishing in periodicals wrote anonymously, others published books, articles and reviews under their own names. Wilkes teases out the distinctiveness of nineteenth-century women's often ignored contributions to the critical reception of canonical women authors, and also devotes space to the pioneering efforts of Lawrance, Kavanagh and Williams to draw attention to the long tradition of female literary activity up to the nineteenth century. She draws on commentary by male critics of the period as well, to provide context for this important contribution to the recuperation of women's critical discourse in nineteenth-century Britain.

Focusing particularly on the critical reception of Jane Austen, Charlotte BrontA" and George Eliot, Joanne Wilkes offers in-depth examinations of reviews by eight female critics: Maria Jane Jewsbury, Sara Coleridge, Hannah Lawrance, Jane Williams, Julia Kavanagh, Anne Mozley, Margaret Oliphant and Mary Augusta Ward. What they wrote about women writers, and what their writings tell us about the critics' own sense of themselves as women writers, reveal the distinctive character of nineteenth-century women's contributions to literary history. Wilkes explores the different choices these critics, writing when women had to grapple with limiting assumptions about female intellectual capacities, made about how to disseminate their own writing. While several publishing in periodicals wrote anonymously, others published books, articles and reviews under their own names. Wilkes teases out the distinctiveness of nineteenth-century women's often ignored contributions to the critical reception of canonical women authors, and also devotes space to the pioneering efforts of Lawrance, Kavanagh and Williams to draw attention to the long tradition of female literary activity up to the nineteenth century. She draws on commentary by male critics of the period as well, to provide context for this important contribution to the recuperation of women's critical discourse in nineteenth-century Britain.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work. This volume includes her 1872 novel At his Gates with editorial notes by Joanne Wilkes, including a new introduction, headnote and explanatory notes which provide key information about the book and its publication history.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

In 1924 eight young women drove across the American West in two Model T Fords. In nine weeks they traveled more than nine thousand unpaved miles on an extended car-camping trip through six national parks, "without a man or a gun along." It was the era of the flapper, but this book tells the story of a group of farm girls who met while attending Iowa's Teacher's College and who shared a "yen to see some things." A blend of oral and written history, adventure, memoir, and just plain heartfelt living, "Eight Women" is a story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Weaving together a granddaughter's essays with family stories and anecdotes from the 1924 trip, the book portrays four generations of women extending from nineteenth-century Norway to present-day Iowa--and sets them loose across the western United States where the perils and practicalities of automotive travel reaffirm family connections while also celebrating individual freedom.

This is the most ambitious scholarly critical edition of Oliphant's work ever undertaken. The sheer scale of her output has meant that selection is essential, but the edition aims to convey the range and variety of her work in both fiction and non-fictional genres. It will bring together for the first time her critical writing and other journalism for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the Spectator, the St James's Gazette, as well as her articles in the Contemporary Review, the Edinburgh, and Macmillan's Magazine. Much of her fiction, including full length novels, short stories and novellas, was first published in periodicals: in Blackwood's, the Cornhill, Longman's Magazine, Macmillan's, and Good Words. Few of her manuscripts survive, but substantive textual work remains to be done on the editorial changes made between periodical serialization and first appearance in volume form. The edition will place particular emphasis on her shorter fiction, much of which will be reprinted for the first time, and on her work as a biographer, historian, and literary historian.