Abstract
The profession of literary critic is a relatively modern one; it is only with the early twentieth-century establishment of university courses in vernacular English literature that we can begin to see published critical works as the medium for the formation of literary canons and judgements concerning the aesthetic or other merits of literary works. Prior to that date the piecemeal support by private publishing houses — motivated by the prospects for commercial gain or prestige — of biographical dictionaries, encyclopaedias of knowledge and learning or anthologies of writing are the major sources we consult for evidence of which literary works have been valued and why. The inclusion or exclusion of work by women in these endeavours is often a matter of opportunity, acquaintance or hearsay. However, we are not without material in this area. Margaret Ezell records that ‘Between 1675 and 1875, there were at least twenty-five biographical encyclopaedias and anthologies devoted to chronicling the lives and labours of literary Englishwomen.’1 Like the form in which it is newly chronicled — the relatively modern phenomenon of the accessible printed book — women’s literary achievement tends to be seen as a novelty or curiosity rather than as an expected product of a civilized culture.
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Notes
Margaret Ezell, ‘The Tedious Chase: Writing Women’s Literary History in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, in Writing Women’s Literary History (London and Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 66–103 (p. 68).
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George Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the learned languages, arts and sciences (London, 1752).
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Carol Barash, English Women’s Poetry, 1649–1714: Politics, Community and Literary Authority ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997 );
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Paula McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace 1678–1730 ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998 ).
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Alexander Pettit, ‘Terrible Texts, “Marginal” Works, and the Mandate of the Moment: The Case of Eliza Haywood’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 22 (2003), 293–314.
Patrick Spedding, A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood ( London: Pickering and Chatto, 2004 ).
Susan Staves, A Literary History of Women’s Writing in Britain, 1660–1789 ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 ), p. 439.
Paula Backscheider, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre ( Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005 ), p. 24.
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© 2010 Ros Ballaster
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Ballaster, R. (2010). Critical Review. In: Ballaster, R. (eds) The History of British Women’s Writing, 1690–1750. The History of British Women’s Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230298354_15
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