British Women Writers and the French Revolution provides an overview of a wide range of British women's writings on the French Revolution, from writers sympathetic to the Revolution like Mary Robinson, Helen Maria Williams, and Charlotte Smith, to anti-revolutionary writers like Hannah More and Jane West. Based on new research in French and British archives and libraries, the book uncovers little-known writings by British women, and argues that these writers developed a distinct antinationalism, in some cases even a feminist cosmopolitanism, in their responses to the European revolutionary crisis.

Examines the full spectrum of women's participation in the social, economic, religious, and poetic debates surrounding the French Revolution.

British Women's Life Writing, 1760-1840 brings together for the first time a wide range of print and manuscript sources to demonstrate women's innovative approach to self-representation. It examines canonical writers, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Robinson, and Helen Maria Williams, amongst others.

This book presents a unique sociological examination of British raciology, focusing on women's literary works of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and drawing from a range of academic disciplines, particularly literature, history and cultural studies. Wright traces the emergence of British modernity through the writings of a select group of women writers (including Jane Austen, Hannah More, Fanny Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Maria Edgeworth) of diverse political and philosophical affiliations, and fills a gap in scholarship on feminist accounts of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women's writing.

In eighteenth-century literature, negative representations of Catholic nuns and convents were pervasive. Yet, during the politico-religious crises initiated by the French Revolution, a striking literary shift took place as British writers championed the cause of nuns, lauded their socially relevant work, and addressed the attraction of the convent for British women. Interactions with Catholic religious, including priests and nuns, Tonya J Moutray argues, motivated writers, including Hester Thrale Piozzi, Helen Maria Williams, and Charlotte Smith, to revaluate the historical and contemporary utility of religious refugees. Beyond an analysis of literary texts, Moutray's study also examines nuns’ personal and collective narratives, as well as news coverage of their arrival to England, enabling a nuanced investigation of a range of issues, including nuns' displacement and imprisonment in France, their rhetorical and practical strategies to resist authorities, representations of refugee migration to and resettlement in England, relationships with benefactors and locals, and the legal status of "English" nuns and convents in England, including their work in recruitment and education. Moutray shows how writers and the media negotiated the multivalent figure of the nun during the 1790s, shaping British perceptions of nuns and convents during a time critical to their survival.

The Routledge Companion to Romantic Women Writers overviews critical reception for Romantic women writers from their earliest periodical reviews through the most current scholarship and directs users to avenues of future research. It is divided into two parts.The first section offers topical discussions on the status of provincial poets, on women’s engagement in children’s literature, the relation of women writers to their religious backgrounds, the historical backgrounds to women’s orientalism, and their engagement in debates on slavery and abolition.The second part surveys the life and careers of individual women – some 47 in all with sections for biography, biographical resources, works, modern editions, archival holdings, critical reception, and avenues for further research. The final sections of each essay offer further guidance for researchers, including “Signatures” under which the author published, and a “List of Works” accompanied, whenever possible, with contemporary prices and publishing formats. To facilitate research, a robust “Works Cited” includes all texts mentioned or quoted in the essay.

France and Great Britain, so close geographically but separated by language, culture and history, had been exchanging merchandise, visitors, rulers and ideas for hundreds of years before the eighteenth century. The flow of traffic only quickened during this period, and became a flood, in the direction of Great Britain, during the decade following the Revolution. While certain of these exchanges, such as Voltaire’s sojourn abroad, have been studied in detail, others are coming into focus only as scholars study secondary figures in the host country and the interactions of various groups with its citizens. British-French Exchanges in the Eighteenth Century gathers together fourteen recent essays by scholars from Great Britain and the United States who have examined various parameters of the subject. Correspondences and translations are obvious forms of cultural sharing and are in play in many of the essays. Others recount and analyse the stories of persons who actually visited the other country in circumstances ranging from pure tourism to emigration to a hostage exchange. A final group of essays treats intellectual influences in realms as diverse as encyclopaedism, cultural analysis, connoisseurship, and cosmopolitanism in the arts. The volume is appropriate for collections in history, literature, and culture. TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I: Translations and Correspondence 1 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s English Correspondents During the French Revolution MALCOLM COOK 2 The English Translations of Voltaire’s La Pucelle J. PATRICK LEE† 3 Enlightened Exchange: The Correspondence of André Morellet and Lord Shelburne DOROTHY MEDLIN and ARLENE P. SHY 4 The Scottish Enlightenment in Action: The Correspondence of William Robertson and J.-B.-A. Suard JEFFREY SMITTEN Part II: Sojourns Abroad 5 ‘The Only Disagreeable Thing in the Whole’: the Selection and Experience of the British Hostages for the Delivery of Cape Breton in Paris, 1748-49 ROBIN EAGLES 6 Peregrinations to the Convent: Hester Thrale Piozzi and Ann Radcliffe TONYA MOUTRAY MCARTHUR 7 Friend or Foe? French Émigrés Discover Britain ROSENA DAVISON 8 ‘Genuine Anecdotes’: Mary Charlton and Revolutionary Celebrity GILLIAN DOW Part III: Intellectual and Artistic Exchanges 9 Two Partial English-Language Translations of the Encyclopédie: The Encyclopedias of John Barrow and Temple Henry Croker JEFF LOVELAND 10 British Biography in the Encyclopédie méthodique: Histoire KATHLEEN HARDESTY DOIG 11 Diderot, Dentistry and British Politics: Two Neglected Pamphlets DAVID ADAMS 12 British and French Influences on Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer DEIDRE DAWSON 13 A Commonwealth of Connoisseurs: British Humanism in the Art and Science of the Ancien Régime ELIZABETH LIEBMAN 14 An Anglo-Swiss Connection in the Age of Voltaire: Jean Huber’s British Friends and Relations GARRY APGAR

Tracing the rise of conduct literature and the didactic novel over the course of the eighteenth century, this book explores how British women used the didactic novel genre to engage in political debate during and immediately after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Although didactic novels were frequently conventional in structure, they provided a venue for women to uphold, to undermine, to interrogate, but most importantly, to write about acceptable social codes and values. The essays discuss the multifaceted ways in which didacticism and women’s writing were connected and demonstrate the reforming potential of this feminine and ostensibly constricting genre. Focusing on works by novelists from Jane West to Susan Ferrier, the collection argues that didactic novels within these decades were particularly feminine; that they were among the few acceptable ways by which women could participate in public political debate; and that they often blurred political and ideological boundaries. The first part addresses both conservative and radical texts of the 1790s to show their shared focus on institutional reform and indebtedness to Mary Wollstonecraft, despite their large ideological range. In the second part, the ideas of Hannah More influence the ways authors after the French revolution often linked the didactic with domestic improvement and national unity. The essays demonstrate the means by which the didactic genre works as a corrective not just on a personal and individual level, but at the political level through its focus on issues such as inheritance, slavery, the roles of women and children, the limits of the novel, and English and Scottish nationalism. This book offers a comprehensive and wide-ranging picture of how women with various ideological and educational foundations were involved in British political discourse during a time of radical partisanship and social change.

The first major collection of essays to provide a comprehensive examination of the British literature of the French Revolution.

This study will be a key resource for scholars, teachers, and students in British literary studies, women's studies, and cultural history.--Stuart Curran, University of Pennsylvania "Internet Review of Books"