Since Mentor, Telemachus' advisor in Homer's Odyssey, gave name to the figure of the "wise teacher," fictional representations of mentoring have permeated classic and contemporary cultural texts of different literary genres such as fiction, poetry, and life writing. The contributions of this volume explore wisdom in old age through a series of narratives of mentorship which, either from a critical or a personal perspective, undermine ageist views of later life.

Literary studies and their associated critical theories offer a refreshing viewpoint from which humanist-oriented studies of ageing may be re-conceptualized, and an integrated view of ageing and gender can be developed. The present volume builds on the work of seminal authors in the field of literary gerontology, while it also elaborates on important theories that age-critics have developed in the broader field of cultural gerontology, to present the experience of ageing, and old age in particular, as a creative phase of the life course that completes the older person's identity and, specifically, that of the older woman. As a contrast to stereotypical views of ageing women that are still sustained in both gerontological and social domains, the essays in this collection focus on the works of eleven women writers whose careers were or have been prolonged into their old age, and whose later literary creativity reveals fascinating aspects about both the complex, contradictory, and enriching experience of growing older, and especially of doing so as an artist and as a woman.