The Female Pen: Women Writers and Novelists, 1621-1818

by B.G. MacCarthy

Had B.G. MacCarthy's criticism been available, Showalter's A Literature of Their Own would have been a very different kind of book...In some ways, contemporary could be ten years ahead if we had started the climb from MacCarthy's groundwork."
-Maggie Humm, University of East London
Back in print for the first time since the 1940's, this classic work of pre-feminist literary criticism is a challenging and authoritative assessment of women's contributions to English literature. B. G. MacCarthy, widely praised for the originality of her scholarship, challenges the dominant picture of mascaline literary history created by T. S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis. Written with crisp humor and irony, her exploration of women's writing. Focusing on a wide range of authors including Lady Mary Wroath, Eliza Hayward, Aphra Behn, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Inchbald, Margaret Cavendish and Jane Austen- illustrates that these women attempted almost every genre of fiction, enriched many, and initiated some of the most important. Often savagely witty, The Female Pen discusses a vast array of fictional forms, including picturesque, moralistic, oriental, domestic, and gothic novels.

488 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Pippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good survey, except that the writer sometimes sounds like a Victorian schoolmistress!

2007 - I have made a note that my opinion of this has changed greatly - I presume not for the better. Can't remember why!