The French Revolution stirred a bitter debate in Britain about the nature of civil society and the political nation. This is an original and lively study of the efforts of women writers of the period to base a reformed state and national culture on virtues and domains traditionally conceded to women. Gary Kelly, a leading expert on the period, investigates this hitherto neglected achievement by combining a wide survey of women's writing in its historical context with detailed analyses of three critically neglected leading women writers--Helen Maria Williams, Mary Hays, and Elizabeth Hamilton....

Describing the growth of Wollstonecraft's mind and career, this acclaimed study scrutinises all her writings as experiments in revolutionising writing in terms of her revolutionary feminism. ..clearly-argued and often informative...' - Vivien Jones, British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin and Review 'Kelly's approach demystifies Wollstonecraft's life in a most refreshing way' - Syndy McMillen Conger, Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Describing the growth of Wollstonecraft's mind and career, this acclaimed study scrutinises all her writings as experiments in revolutionising writing in terms of her revolutionary feminism.

English Fiction of the Romantic Period 1789-1830 is the first comprehensive historical survey of fiction from that period for many decades. It combines a clear awareness of the period's social history with recent developments in literary criticism, theory and history, and explains the astounding variety of forms in Romantic fiction in terms of the various cultural, political, social, regional and gender conflicts of the time.
It provides a broad-ranging survey from the major authors and works through to the sub-genres of the period. Jan Austin and Sir Alter Scott are discussed...