French Women Playwrights Before the Twentieth Century: A Checklist

(Hardback)

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Description

Until recently, French women playwrights had received almost no critical attention and their works were for the most part completely unknown, but this volume is evidence of the important contribution they have made to world literature. It presents an extensive list of the dramatic works of more than 400 French women playwrights from the 16th through 19th centuries and includes brief biographical information, as well as publication, performance and availability information for nearly 3000 plays. The volume includes authors who are relatively unknown, as well as more canonical names such as Marguerite de Navarre and George Sand. The book is divided into four chapters, each devoted to a particular century with authors listed alphabetically. Each entry includes basic biographical information about the authors, such as pseudonyms, place and date of birth and death, professions or activities for which the author is known, and other genres in which the author wrote. Plays are listed chronologically under the author's name.

Reviews

Beach's checklist of published and manuscript plays by French women playwrights will be extremely valuable to scholars in women's studies. Extremely valuable is the identification of a holding library for each title. Beach's work will make readers long for more information about these playwrights, many of them prolific and famous in their time, and for an explanation of why they are largely absent from literary history. * Choice *

Author Bio

Cecilia Beach received a PhD in French literature from New York University in 1993. In her dissertation, she examined representations of the maternal in works by modern French women playwrights. She is presently working on a checklist of works by French women playwrights in the 20th century.