Women Writers and the Nation's Past 1790-1860: Empathetic Histories

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Description

1790 saw the publication of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France -- the definitive tract of modern conservatism as a political philosophy. Though women of the period wrote texts that clearly responded to and reacted against Burke's conception of English history and to the contemporary political events that continued to shape it, this conversation was largely ignored or dismissed, and much of it remains to be reconsidered today. Examining the works of women writers from Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft to the Strickland sisters and Mary Anne Everett Green, this book begins to recuperate that conversation and in doing so uncovers a more complete and nuanced picture of women's participation in the writing of history. Professor Mary Spongberg puts forward an alternate, feminized historiography of Britain that demonstrates how women writers' recourse to history caused them to become generically innovative and allowed them to participate in the political debates that framed the emergence of modern British historiography, and to push back against the Whig interpretation of history that predominated from 1790-1860.

Reviews

Mary Spongberg brilliantly reorients standard views of British womens historical writings, arguing that they are direct responses to Edmund Burke and the French Revolution of the 1790s. If you care about the history of gender, authorship, historiography, and revolutions, you need to read this book. * Devoney Looser, Professor of English, Arizona State University, USA *
Erudite and illuminating, this book adds greatly to our understanding of the political nature of womens writing between 1790 and 1860, and how it has been eclipsed from the masculinist narratives about Englands state-building and nation formation. No longer can these womens voices be ignored. * June Purvis, Emerita Professor of Womens and Gender History, University of Portsmouth, UK *

Author Bio

Mary Spongberg is Dean of Arts and Social Sciences and Professor of History at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. She has published widely on the history of women & feminism, gender, and the body. She is the editor of the Companion to Womens Historical Writing (2005) and is on the editorial board of Womens History Review.