Imagining women readers reassesses the cultural significance of women's reading in the period 1789-1820. While much attention has been paid to the moral panic provoked by novel-reading during this period, this study offers a more progressive and enabling narrative. From the turbulent years following the French Revolution to the fiction of Jane Austen, Imagining women readers charts the rise of a self-regulating reader, who possesses both moral and cultural authority. De Ritter identifies how writers working in a range of genres - including conduct books, educational texts, and fiction -...
Imagining women readers reassesses the cultural significance of women's reading in the period 1789-1820. While much attention has been paid to the mor...
