Der durch Vorurteile, Gewohnheit und Erziehung sanktionierten Erniedrigung der Frau zu Unterwürfigkeit und Unwissenheit stellen die Moralischen Wochenschriften ihr auf humanistischem Gedankengut beruhendes Frauenbild entgegen. Sie propagieren mit unterschiedlichen Argumenten und Methoden die Anerkennung der Frau als vernunftbegabtes, bildungsfähiges Individuum und die Aufwertung ihrer Stellung in Ehe und Familie. Damit leisten sie grundlegende Vorarbeit für spätere Frauenbewegungen.

Der durch Vorurteile, Gewohnheit und Erziehung sanktionierten Erniedrigung der Frau zu Unterwürfigkeit und Unwissenheit stellen die Moralischen Wochenschriften ihr auf humanistischem Gedankengut beruhendes Frauenbild entgegen. Sie propagieren mit unterschiedlichen Argumenten und Methoden die Anerkennung der Frau als vernunftbegabtes, bildungsfähiges Individuum und die Aufwertung ihrer Stellung in Ehe und Familie. Damit leisten sie grundlegende Vorarbeit für spätere Frauenbewegungen.

Exploring territory seldom visited by feminist scholars, Ann Messenger in this new book presents eight studies of literary relationships between men and women writers, ranging from the Restoration to the end of the eighteenth century. The essays show men and women working together, praising and criticizing each other's work, borrowing—and changing—each other's plots and characters, recording their different perceptions of their common world. From Dryden's praise of Anne Killigrew, through Gay's and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's collaboration on a town eclogue, Thomas Southerne's dramatizations of novels by Aphra Behn, and Eliza Haywood's version of the Spectator, to Cornelia Knight's sequel to Rasselas, these relationships demonstrate that men and women writers inhabited the same literary world, shared the traditions of the mainstream of English literature. Most of the women have since faded from view. But Messenger suggests the time has come to rediscover them, to reassess their work, and to revise the commonly accepted canon of literature accordingly. Although most of the studies deal with the way women's writing responds to writing by men, the Afterword combats the charge that the women's work is "derivative." Free of critical jargon and ideological strait-jacketing, His and Hers makes some little-known writers available and interesting to specialists and nonspecialists, feminists and traditionalists, alike, while it sheds new light on some of the most familiar figures of the period. The Appendix reprints some of the shorter works which have been analyzed in detail, and summaries in the text help to compensate for the unavailability of some of the women's books. The comparative approach suggests a wide and rich field for further research.

The English novel written between 1700 and 1740 remains a comparatively neglected area. In addition to Daniel Defoe, whose Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders are landmarks in the history of English fiction, many other authors were at work. These included such women as Penelope Aubin, Jane Barker, Mary Davys, and Eliza Haywood, who made a considerable contribution to widening the range of emotional responses in fiction. These authors, and many others, continued writing in the genres inherited from the previous century, such as criminal biographies, the Utopian novel, the science fictional voyage, and the epistolary novel. This annotated bibliography includes entries for these works and for critical materials pertinent to them. The volume first seeks to establish the existing studies of the era, along with anthologies. It then provides entries for a wide-ranging selection of works which cover fictional, theoretical, historical, political, and cultural topics, to provide a comprehensive background to the unfolding and understanding of prose fiction in the early 18th century. This is followed by an alphabetical listing of novels, their editions, and any critical material available on each. The next section provides a chronological record of significant and enduring works of fiction composed or translated in this period. The volume concludes with extensive indexes.