Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700–1830

by Edited by Elizabeth Eger , Charlotte Grant , Clíona Ó Gallchoir , Penny Warburton

• ISBN13: 9780521771061
• ISBN10: 0521771064
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-02-19
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this interdisciplinary volume, an international team of specialists examine the dynamic relation between women and the public sphere between 1700 and 1830. Drawing on literary and visual evidence, contributors highlight the range and diversity of women's cultural activity during the period, from historiography, publishing and translation to philosophical and political writing. Women, Writing and the Public Sphere examines the history of the public spaces women occupied, raising questions of scandal and display, improvement, virtue and morality in the context of the production and consumption of culture by women in eighteenth-century England. The contribution of educated women to the British Enlightenment and the role of translation and exchange between European intellectual movements in shaping ideas of nationhood is also addressed. This book offers a comprehensive account of women's philosophical and political reflections on the nature of their place in the public sphere.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	vii
List of contributors	ix
Preface and acknowledgements	xii
Introduction: women, writing and representation	1	(26)
Elizabeth Eger
Charlotte Grant
Cliona O Gallchoir
Penny Warburton
PART I WOMEN IN THE PUBLIC EYE
Coffee-women, The Spectator and the public sphere in the early eighteenth century	27	(26)
Markman Ellis
Misses, Murderesses and Magdalens: women in the public eye	53	(22)
Caroline Gonda
PART II CONSUMING ARTS
The choice of Hercules: the polite arts and `female excellence' in eighteenth-century London	75	(29)
Charlotte Grant
Representing culture: The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (1779)	104	(29)
Elizabeth Eger
A moral purchase: femininity, commerce and abolition, 1788--1792	133	(30)
Kate Davies
PART III LEARNED LADIES: FROM BLUESTOCKINGS TO COSMOPOLITAN INTELLECTUALS
Bluestocking feminism	163	(18)
Gary Kelly
Catharine Macaulay: history, republicanism and the public sphere	181	(19)
Susan Wiseman
Gender, nation and revolution: Maria Edgeworth and Stephanie-Felicite de Genlis	200	(17)
Cliona O Gallchoir
Salons, Alps and Cordilleras: Helen Maria Williams, Alex von Humboldt and the discourse of Romantic travel	217	(22)
Nigel Leask
PART IV THE FEMALE SUBJECT
The most public sphere of all: the family	239	(18)
Sylvana Tomaselli
Theorising public opinion: Elizabeth Hamilton's model of self, sympathy and society	257	(17)
Penny Warburton
Intimate connections: scandalous memoirs and epistolary indiscretion	274	(16)
Mary Jacobus
Bibliography	290	(23)
Index	313