Revising Women:

In her preface, Backscheider makes high claims for this collection as the fruit of several lifetimes' feminist rereading of 18th-century fiction. These claims turn out to be justified by a truly extraordinary book.ChoiceThese are valuable essays. Those who are interested in eighteenth-century English women, whether or not they are literary scholars, will find much to interest and stimulate them in this book.Barbara Brandon SchnorrenbergAlbionWritten to illustrate the maturity of a discipline, the essays in Revising Women demonstrate that women writers used fiction to participate in debates taking place in the public sphere.Nora NachumiJASNA NewsThe project that has engaged Paula Backscheider, one of the most prolific and prominent scholars in the field of eighteenth-century studies, is one that I believe is both heroic and potentially enduring: to reconcile the sort of thick description she favorshistorical-biographical narratives that take full advantage of extant archive material and reveal richly detailed portraits of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British culturewith the lessons learned and opportunities afforded by recent literary theory.Richard C. TaylorNWSA JournalThese essays reinforce the need to reevaluate female authorship of the eighteenth century.Rikki Noel-WilliamsTulsa Studies in Women's LiteratureThis well-conceived and exciting book brings together experts in feminist theory, all of whom utilize with sophistication the skills of historical research, biographical interpretation (including post-modern issues of the construction of the self), and cultural studies. Their names alone insure a volume well worth reading, and these essays represent the writers at their best. Their methodology often represents advances in the application and understanding of feminist theory, and is of interest to all who follow developments in that field.Patricia Craddock, University of Florida