British Women Poets of the Long Eighteenth Century: An Anthology

This anthology gathers 368 poems by 80 British women poets of the long eighteenth century. Few of these poems have been reprinted since originally published, and all are crucial to understanding fully the literary history of women writers.

Paula R. Backscheider and Catherine E. Ingrassia demonstrate the enormous diversity of poetry produced during this time by organizing the poems in three broad and deliberately overlapping categories: by genre, establishing that women wrote in all of the forms that men did with equal mastery and creativity; by theme, offering a revisionary look at the range of topics these writers addressed, including war, ecology, friendship, religion, and the stages of life; and by the poems' more specific focus on the women's experiences as writers.

Backscheider and Ingrassia have selected poems that represent the best work of skilled poets, creating a wonderful mix of canonical and little-known pieces. They include the complete texts of longer poems that are abridged or omitted in other collections. Their substantial part introductions, textual notes, bibliographical information, and biographical sketches situate the poets and their writings within the cultural and political milieu in which they appeared.

To generate further scholarship on this subject, this essential anthology puts primary texts in front of students, scholars, and general readers. It fills the persistent need to document women's poetic expression during the long eighteenth century and to rewrite the literary history of the period, a history from which women have largely been excluded.

Author: Paula R. Backscheider
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 10/01/2009
Pages: 960
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 3.05lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 2.30d
ISBN: 9780801892783

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2010
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2010 pg. 275

About the Author

Paula R. Backscheider is the Philpott-Stevens Eminent Scholar in the Department of English at Auburn University. She is the author of several books, including Daniel Defoe: His Life and Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre, winner of the James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association, and editor of Revising Women: Eighteenth-Century "Women's Fiction" and Social Engagement, all published by Johns Hopkins. Catherine E. Ingrassia is a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, author of Authorship, Commerce, and Gender, and editor of Anti-Pamela.