Fin-de-siecle fiction by British female aesthetes and American women regionalists stages moments of rebellion when female characters rise up and insist on the right to maintain control of their creations. Cordell asserts that these revolutionary acts constitute a transatlantic conversation about aesthetic practice and creative ownership.

Hannah Cowley (1743-1809) was a very successful dramatist, and something of an eighteenth-century celebrity. New critical interest in the drama of this period has meant a resurgence of interest in Cowley's writing and in the performance of her plays. This is the first substantial monograph study to examine Cowley's life and work.

Lucas Malet is one of a number of forgotten female writers whose work bridges the gap between George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. Malet's writing was intrinsically linked to her passion for art. This is the first book-length study of Malet's novels.

This edited collection from a distinguished group of contributors explores a range of topics including literature as imperialist propaganda, the representation of the colonies in British literature, the emergence of literary culture in the colonies and the creation of new gender roles such as 'girl Crusoes' in works of fiction.

This study examines the presentation of suicide within the genre of the eighteenth-century novel. Referencing several key writers of the period, McGuire demonstrates that their work inscribes a nationalist imperative to frame suicide as self-sacrifice.

Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) is best-known today for her friendship with fellow feminist and pacifist Vera Brittain and for her last novel, South Riding. This is the first monograph to provide a literary criticism of Holtby's social philosophy and presents in-depth readings of all her major works as well as some of her less well-known writing.

This study offers a timely and necessary reassessment of the careers of Ann Yearsley and Hannah More. Making use of newly-discovered letters and poems, Andrews provides a full analysis of the breakdown of the two writers' affiliation and compares it to other labouring-class relationships based on patronage.

Jane Austen's six complete novels and her juvenilia are examined in the context of civil society and gender. Steiner's study uses a variety of contexts to appraise Austen's work: Scottish Enlightenment theories of societal development, early-Romantic discourses on gender roles, modern sociological theories on the civilizing process.

Throughout history the poetic muse has tended to be (a passive) female and the poet male. This dynamic caused problems for late Victorian and twentieth-century women poets; how could the muse be reclaimed and moved on from the passive role of old? Parker looks at fin-de-siecle and modernist lyric poets to investigate how they overcame these challenges and identifies three key strategies: the reconfiguring of the muse as a contemporary instead of a historical/mythological figure; the muse as a male figure; and an interchangeable poet/muse relationship, granting agency to both.

Bringing together leading Wharton scholars from Europe, and North America, this volume offers the first ever collection of essays on Edith Wharton's 1913 tour de force, The Custom of the Country.