Editing Women's Writing

This edited volume is the first to reflect on the theory and practice of editing women’s writing of the 18th century. The list of contributors includes experts on the fiction, drama, poetry, life-writing, diaries and correspondence of familiar and lesser known women, including Jane Austen, Delarivier Manley, Eliza Haywood and Mary Robinson. Contributions examine the demands of editing female authors more familiar to a wider readership such as Elizabeth Montagu, Mary Robinson and Helen Maria Williams, as well as the challenges and opportunities presented by the recovery of authors such as Sarah Green, Charlotte Bury and Alicia LeFanu. The interpretative possibilities of editing works published anonymously and pseudonymously are considered across a range of genres. Collectively these discussions examine the interrelation of editing and textual criticism and show how new editions might transform understandings not only of the woman writer and women’s literary history, but also of our own editorial practice.

Amy Culley is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln. She is the author of British Women’s Life Writing, 1760–1840: Friendship, Community, and Collaboration (Palgrave, 2014), co-editor with Daniel Cook of Women’s Life Writing, 1700–1850: Gender, Genre and Authorship (Palgrave, 2012) and editor of Women’s Court and Society Memoirs, volumes 1–4 (Pickering & Chatto, 2009).

Anna M. Fitzer is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Hull. She is editor of Memoirs of Women Writers Part I (Pickering & Chatto, 2012), a four-volume set in the Chawton House Library series incorporating Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mrs Frances Sheridan, Memoirs of the Life of Mrs Hannah More, and Some Account of Life and Writings of Mrs Trimmer.