I belong to several discussion groups in Library Thing, and this morning as I was catching up on reading new posts, I came across an interesting book that one of the groups has been discussing, Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen by Dale Spender. I have a feeling I've heard of this book before, but I was prompted today to actually go and look for it. My library has a copy on the shelves (and very obviously it's been well used, which is nice to see, though I do wish so many people didn't feel the urge to do so much underlining), so I've brought it home with me to take a peek at this weekend.
It looks like a survey of women authors who were writing before Jane Austen picked up pen and ink. Interestingly the author had not even set out to write this particular book.
"This is not a book I started to write. Half-way through my research, I changed my mind. When I began my work on early women novelists--in the attempt to explore the relationship between women and fiction--I had assumed that women novelists had not really 'come into their own' until the entry of Jane Austen, and that the starting point for my work would be somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century. At that stage, I had no idea that for more than one hundred and fifty years before Jane Austen, women had been writing novels, and that to return to the early days of women's relationship to fiction meant to go back to the seventeenth, and not the nineteenth century."
"But having embarked on my research, I soon 'discovered' more and more women writers, and more women's novels, in the eighteenth century, and the seventieth century, and I began to realize that far from standing at the beginning of women's entry to fiction writing, Jane Austen was the inheritor of a long and well-established tradition of 'women's novels'."
Spender goes on to talk about how wonderful her many discoveries of unknown women authors from this period was and being able to read their works, yet also being frustrated that such a rich heritage of women's writings has been lost in the first place. I won't be able to read the book straight through at the moment, though I'd like to skim some of the chapters. The book is broken into two parts--Literary Origins and Literary Standards. It looks like she talks about some authors in detail (probably the better known from the list). Here is the list of authors (a few more than 100 actually--I snagged the list from the Wikipedia).
- Penelope Aubin
- Jane Barker
- Aphra Behn
- Anna Maria Bennett (whom Spender called Agnes Maria Bennett)
- Elizabeth Bonhôte
- Elizabeth Boyd
- Sophie Briscoe
- Eliza Bromley
- Frances Brooke
- Indiana Brooks
- Mary Brunton
- Mrs Burke
- Frances Burney
- Sarah Harriet Burney
- Lady Charlotte Bury
- Mary Butt, Mrs Sherwood
- Elizabeth Byron (Strutt)
- Mrs. Carver
- Lady Mary Champion de Crespigny
- Charlotte Charke
- Mary Charlton
- Harriet Cheney
- Harriet Chilcot
- Emily Clark
- Jane Collier
- Mary Collyer
- Maria Susanna Cooper
- Helen Craik
- Charlotte Dacre
- Anne Seymour Damer
- Mary Davys
- Anne Dawe
- Anne Eden
- Maria Edgeworth
- Elisa Fenwick
- Susan Ferrier
- Sarah Fielding
- E. M. Foster
- Hannah Webster Foster
- Anne Fuller
- Phoebe Gibbes
- Mrs A. Gomershall
- Sarah Green
- Elizabeth Griffith
- Susannah Minifie Gunning
- Elizabeth Hamilton
- Lady Mary Hamilton
- Mary Ann Hanway
- Jane Harvey
- Laetitia Matilda Hawkins
- Mary Hays
- Eliza Haywood
- Mary Hearne
- Elizabeth Helme
- Elizabeth Hervey
- Mrs Howell
- Anne Hughes
- M. (Harley) Hugill
- Maria Hunter
- Rachel Hunter
- Elizabeth Inchbald
- Frances Jacson
- Mrs. Johnson
- Susanna Keir
- Isabella Kelly
- Anne Kerr
- Sophia King
- Ellis Cornelia Knight
- Caroline Lamb
- Sarah Lansdell
- Mary Latter
- Harriet Lee
- Sophia Lee
- Charlotte Lennox
- Alethea Lewis
- Charlotte MacCarthy
- Anna Maria Mackenzie
- Delarivier Manley
- Jean Marishall (whom Spender called Jean Marshall)
- Mrs Martin
- Eliza Matthews
- Anna Meades
- Mary Meeke
- Margaret Minifie
- Hannah More
- Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson)
- Elizabeth Norman
- Amelia Opie
- Charlotte Palmer
- Mary Elizabeth Parker
- Catherine Parry
- Eliza Phelp Parsons
- Susanna Pearson
- M. Peddle
- Laetitia Pilkington
- Mary Pilkington
- Mary Pix
- Arabella Plantin
- Anne Plumptre
- Elizabeth Plunkett
- Jane Porter
- Elizabeth Purbeck
- Jane Purbeck
- Ann Radcliffe
- Mary Anne Radcliffe
- Clara Reeve
- Mary Darby Robinson
- Regina Maria Dalton Roche
- Elizabeth Singer Rowe
- Susanna Rowson
- Elizabeth Ryves (or Elizabeth Reeves)
- Charlotte Sanders (or Charlotte Saunders)
- Sarah Robinson Scott
- Catherine Selden
- Frances Sheridan
- Ann Emelinda Skinn
- Eleanor Sleath
- Catherine Smith
- Charlotte Smith
- Elizabeth Isabella Spence
- Sarah Emma Spencer
- Augusta Amelia Stuart
- Miss Taylor
- Elizabeth Thomas
- Jane Timbury
- Elizabeth Tomlins
- Jane Warton
- Jane West
- Helena Wells
- Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson
- Helen Maria Williams
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- Mrs A. Woodfin
- Ann Yearsley
- Mary Julia Young
The only author I've read from the list is Ann Radcliffe, though I've heard of a good handful of them. I even have a few of their novels on my shelves, though I wonder how readily available most of their works are. In any case it is a list I would like to explore more. I usually am a lurker in the LT discusion groups, but I may have to join in and see what experiences other readers have had with these authors.