Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen
AuthorDale Spender
Cover artistMarion Dalley
LanguageEnglish
SubjectFeminist literary history
PublisherPandora Press, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, New York
Publication date
1986
Media typeprint
Pages357
ISBN0863580815 9780863580819
OCLC1036783258
823/.009/9287
LC ClassPR113 .S63 1986

Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen (1986), by Dale Spender, is a foundational study for the reclamation project central to feminist literary studies in English in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Mothers of the Novel

Part I

Mothers of the Novel is divided into three parts. Part I treats a series of seventeenth-century women writers, only some of whom would have been familiar to most readers in 1986: Aphra Behn (1640–1689), Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673), Anne Clifford (1590–1676), Anne Fanshawe (1625–1680), Eliza Haywood (1693–1756),[1] Lucy Hutchinson (1618–1681), Delarivière Manley (1663 –1724), Katherine Philips (1631–1664), Anna Weamys (fl. 1651), and Mary Wroth (1587– 1653).

Part II

Part II includes a list of one hundred and six (106) early women novelists little-known at the time of writing, and the titles of 568 of their novels. Many of these works have since been reprinted and become subjects of academic study, though a proportion of these writers remain relatively obscure or, in some cases, unidentified.

Part III

Part III treats a series of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century writers from the list: Mary Brunton, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Sarah Fielding, Mary Hays, Elizabeth Inchbald, Charlotte Lennox, Amelia Opie, Sydney Owenson, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mothers of the Novel series

Pandora Press released a companion "Mothers of the Novel" series of twenty novels by sixteen authors between 1986 and 1989:

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j One of her novels was reprinted in the "Mothers of the Novel" series.
  2. ^ a b c Two of her novels were reprinted in the "Mothers of the Novel" series.
  3. ^ Listed as "Mrs Burke."
  4. ^ Listed as "Charlotte Clarke."
  5. ^ Listed as "Mary Davis."
  6. ^ Three of her novels were reprinted in the "Mothers of the Novel" series.
  7. ^ Listed as "Mrs A. Gomersall."
  8. ^ Listed as "Mrs Howell."
  9. ^ a b One of her novels, co-written with her sister, was reprinted in the "Mothers of the Novel" series.
  10. ^ Spender here lists Mary Meeke (died c. 1816), at the time of writing believed to have been the author of Elizabeth Meeke's novels. Both wrote under the name of "Mrs Meeke.")
  11. ^ Listed as "Susanna Pearson."
  12. ^ Listed as "Ann Emelinda Skinn."
  13. ^ Listed as "Miss Taylor."
  14. ^ Listed as "Mrs A. Woodfin."

Further reading

External links

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