Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and Their Sisters

by Dabundo, Laura; Kennedy, Deborah; Stoler, John; Miall, David S.; Rosenblum, Joseph; Esterhammer, Angela; Kirkpatrick, Kathryn; Ulrich, David W.; Brewer, William D.; Alwes, Karla; Petronella, Vincent F.; Engar, Ann; Maher, Susan Naramore

• ISBN13: 9780761816126
• ISBN10: 0761816127
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-03-22
• Publisher: UPA

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(4)
Responding to the French Revolution: Williams's Julia and Burney's The Wanderer	5	(14)
Deborah Kennedy
Having Her Cake and Eating, Too: Ambivalence, Popularity, and the Psychosocial Implications of Ann Radcliffe's Fiction	19	(12)
John Stoler
The Preceptor as Fiend: Radcliffe's Psychology of the Gothic	31	(14)
David S. Miall
The Treatment of Women in the Novels of Charlotte Turner Smith	45	(8)
Joseph Rosenblum
Jane Austen's Opacities	53	(8)
Laura Dabundo
Susan Ferrier's Allusions: Comedy, Morality, and the Presence of Milton	61	(12)
Angela Esterhammer
The Limits of Liberal Feminism in Maria Edgeworth's Belinda	73	(10)
Kathryn Kirkpatrick
A Reading of Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent	83	(14)
David W. Ullrich
Mary Wollestonecraft and Mary Shelley: Ideological Affinities	97	(12)
William D. Brewer
The Alienation of Family in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein	109	(12)
Karla Alwes
Mary Shelley, Shakespeare, and the Romantic Theatre	121	(14)
Vincent F. Petronella
Mary Shelley and the Romance of Science	135	(12)
Ann Engar
The Uses of Adventure: The Moral and Evangelical Robinsonnades of Agnes Strickland, Barbara Hofland and Ann Fraser Tytler	147	(12)
Susan Naramore Maher
Representative Chronology of English Novels by Women of the Romantic Period	159	(10)
Selected Bibliography	169	(2)
Index	171	(4)
About the Contributors	175