Ellen Moers (1928–1979^[1]) was an American academic and literary scholar. She is best known for her pioneering contribution to gynocriticism, Literary Women (1976).^[2]

Feminist breakthrough

After two exact but conventional^{[citation needed]} books (on the dandy and on Theodore Dreiser), Moers was caught up by Second-wave feminism, which she credits with "pulling me out of the stacks"^[1] and leading her to write Literary Women. In the latter she established the existence of a strong nineteenth-century tradition of (international) women writers—her identification within it of what she called 'female Gothic' proving especially influential.^[3]

In the fast-moving world of feminist scholarship, her book would be challenged in the following decade as under-theorised and ethnocentric; but continued nonetheless to serve as a significant stepping-stone for future scholarship.^[4]

Twin traditions

Moers pointed to the ambiguous origins of the dandy, in a merger of French and English traditions;^[5] to the paradox in the dandy's highly structured pose of inaction; and to the role of the female dandy.^[6]

She indicated Dreiser's twin role on the cusp between 19th-century realism and 20th-century realism, as well as his roots in the different religious traditions of Catholicism and Protestantism.^[7]