Featuring cutting-edge essays by leading scholars, this collection formulates a new feminist theory of eighteenth-century women's satire.

This is the first scholarly study to focus on satirical prints of women in the late eighteenth century. This was the golden age of graphic satire: thousands of prints were published, and they were viewed by nearly all sections of the population. These prints both reflected and sought to shape contemporary debate about the role of women in society. Cindy McCreery's study examines the beliefs and prejudices of Georgian England which they revealed.

This book revises assumptions about satire as a public, masculine discourse derived from classical precedents, in order to develop theoretical and critical paradigms that accommodate women, popular culture, and postmodern theories of language as a potentially aggressive, injurious act. Although Habermas places satirists like Swift and Pope in the public sphere, this book investigates their participation in clandestine strategies of attack in a world understood to be harboring dangerous secrets. Authors of anonymous pamphlets as well as major figures including Behn, Dryden, Manley, Swift, and Pope, share at times what Swift called the writer's "life by stealth."

Interrelated by a common thread, which is the emphasis on the interdependence of literature and the visual arts, the essays selected for this collection illustrate how eighteenth-century specialists approach word and image studies today. In addition to highlighting various concepts and concerns of particular pertinence to current scholarship, these studies also serve the important practical function of sensitising the reader to both the possibilities and limitations of this sort of interdisciplinary undertaking. Without foregrounding the visual, these contributions aim to look at verbal-visual interaction through the prism of equality and balance that marks word and image studiesâ "that is, without valorising one to the detriment of the other. The choice of images as objects of study reflects the democratisation of the visual domain advocated by visual culture studies: from theatre iconography and painted portraits of actors, to drawing books and educational prints, graphic satire and royal portraiture, conversation pieces and domestic interiors, literary illustrations and versified prints after well-known paintings, and engravings commissioned for calendars and periodicals. If the choice of images is inclusive and diverse so is the choice of texts: epistolary novels, conduct manuals, Salon criticism, plays, drawing books, pamphlets, historical writings, verses accompanying engravings and satirical prints are among those examined from a word and image perspective. The primary objective of this collection is to advance research in the field of word and image theory and methodology by stimulating dialogue on the rich and complex verbal-visual interaction structuring mixed media of expression and underpinning cultural formations in eighteenth-century Europe. Peaceful coexistence, mutual collaboration or striking collisionâ "how do words and images interact in eighteenth-century art, literature and culture? How do they reflect and communicate values, stereotypes and ideologies?

This reference work provides bibliographic details for students of 18th-century studies.

A convenient source of commentary on the careers and works of acclaimed poets, novelists, short story writers, dramatists and philosophers who died between 1800 and 1899. Cumulative title, author, nationality and topic indexes are provided.