Woman to Woman: Female Negotiations During the Long Eighteenth Century

by Carolyn D. Williams (Editor), Angela Escott (Editor), Louise Duckling (Editor)

Overview

Woman to Woman: Female Negotiations During the Long Eighteenth Century is a cross-disciplinary collection of essays drawing on hitherto unexplored archival material, showing how collaboration enabled eighteenth-century women to intervene in military and political affairs, achieve literary success, experience religious fulfilment, and engage in philanthropic projects. Communal female activity might be founded on kinship, shared religious experience, or common hardship. This study covers women from a very wide range of social backgrounds, including queens, aristocrats and country gentlewomen, daughters of clergymen and labourers, and prostitutes. The collection is in honor of Mary Waldron, a founding member of the Women's Studies Group, whose distinguished scholarship is exemplified in the first chapter, and whose generous encouragement of other specialists in feminist studies in the long eighteenth century is described in Isobel Grundy's Preface.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611491432
Publisher:	University Press Copublishing Division
Publication date:	06/01/2010
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Carolyn D. Williams is senior lecturer in the Department of English and American Literature at the University of Reading.
Angela Escott is a music librarian in London.
Louise Duckling is an independent scholar living in Suffolk, England.

Table of Contents

Foreword Isobel Grundy 9

Acknowledgments 15

Introduction Carolyn D. Williams Angela Escott Louise Duckling 19

Part I Family Alliances

Childhood and Child Rearing in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Fiction: a Quiet Revolution Mary Waldron 49

Revolutionary Mothers and Revolting Daughters: Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, Anna Wheeler and Rosina Bulwer Lytton Joanna Goldsworthy Marie Mulvey-Roberts 63

Sisters-Ambition and Compliance: The Case of Mary and Agnes Berry and Joanna and Agnes Baillie Judith Bailey Slagle 79

Part II Friends and Companions

A Woman of Extraordinary Merit: Catherine Bovey of Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire Jessica Munns Penny Richards 101

The Limits of Sympathy: The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen-House (1760) Jennie Batchelor 117

Changes in Roles and Relationships: Multiauthored Epistles from the Aberdeen Quaker Women's Meeting Betty Hagglund 137

Elizabeth Carter and Modes of Knowledge Judith Hawley 157

Part III Adventurous Women

"The best friend in the world": The Relationship between Emma Hamilton and Queen Maria Carolina of Naples Julie Peakman 173

Founding Mothers: Religious Communities in New France Tanis Hinchcliffe 190

"On Boadicea think!": In Search of a Female Army Carolyn D. Williams 204

Bibliography 225

Notes on Contributors 245

Index 248

Editorial Reviews

The empowering effect of intellectual and literary exchange for women is further explored by [a] collection of essays: Woman to Woman: Female Negotiations During the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Carolyn D. Williams, Angela Escott, and Louise Duckling...Woman to Woman reveals a neglected history of women’s co-operative activity, which is key to the study of literary sociability in the period.

The Year's Work In English Studies

Woman to Woman, a stimulating multidisciplinary collection of essays (fittingly, a collaborative project of the London-based Women's Studies Group 1558-1837), seeks to provide a more detailed and nuanced picture of benevolent and productive female sociability….The main strength of this collection is its wealth of new primary material.

Times Literary Supplement

Women in history have generally been studied in terms of the men in their lives. In this insightful collection of essays, Williams (literature, University of Reading), music librarian Escott and independent scholar Duckling and their contributors demonstrate that women's interactions among themselves were, if anything, even more important to their lives. The essays discuss familial connections between women, the bonding within societies of women: authors, prostitutes and religious groups and the overlapping subject of "adventurous women". The cases are all from the long eighteenth century, a time better documented than previous eras. The exception is the closing article of the influence of the history of Queen Boadicea, a model for Queen Elizabeth I. Women such as Emma Hamilton are seen as individuals and others, normally studied in isolation, are seen in the context of friends and family. This volume is appropriately dedicated to the memory of eighteenth century scholar, Mary Waldron.

Inc. Book News

Woman to Woman offers new ways of thinking about female companionship in the long eighteenth century. In exploring relationships between women in the public sphere and the private sphere, and in looking at the lives of women from varying social classes, political backgrounds, and religions, this collection resist popularized notions of female collaboration in the eighteenth century—women were not mindless or vicious towards one another. Rather, women were capable of cooperative work and mutual benefit. Woman to Woman provides insight into diverse primary material and its topics invite further research into other successful collaborations between women.

The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer

Woman to Woman, a stimulating multidisciplinary collection of essays (fittingly, a collaborative project of the London-based Women's Studies Group 1558-1837), seeks to provide a more detailed and nuanced picture of benevolent and productive female sociability….The main strength of this collection is its wealth of new primary material.

Times Literary Supplement (UK)