Medical Advice for Women is a new five-volume collection from Routledge and Edition Synapse covering professional, scientific, and medical opinion, in addition to the popular guides aimed at the female reader, between the years 1830–1915.

Medical literature from this period provides a fascinating insight into the interrelations between social proscriptions, often validated by appeals to religious authority, and medical prescriptions. The narrative contained within this largely chronological collection is not necessarily a progressive one from quackery to medical and...

The short story remains a crucial - if neglected - part of British literary heritage. This accessible and up-to-date critical overview maps out the main strands and figures that shaped the British short story and novella from the 1850s to the present. It offers new readings of both classic and forgotten texts in a clear, jargon-free way.

Literary Feminisms provides a map for charting the difficult waters that feminist theories have created in literary studies. Ruth Robbins shows the reasons for the development of feminist literary critiques, explains the difficulties and exposes some of feminism's blindspots. A wide range of theorists is discussed, ranging from Wollstonecraft to Kristeva, showing the ways in which materialist, psychoanalytic and literary accounts of feminist thinking creatively intersect. Through a series of exemplary readings, of texts such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Yellow...

Subjectivity is a multiple and complex term; it moves between theoretical or philosophical abstractions and the apparently empirical evidence of lived experience. In Subjectivity, Ruth Robbins examines the diverse factors which shape the self in language. Through readings of autobiographical texts written during the last three centuries, Robbins argues for a concept of subjectivity that takes account of the material world in which selves come into being, and places this psychoanalytic concept in a broader theoretical framework. This book is essential reading for all those studying...

This comprehensive and readable introduction offers readers and students a lively and informative guide to Wilde's significance in the context of his own time and his extensive afterlife in literature, criticism and popular culture.