Customer Reviews

British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820

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Devoney Looser's study not only breaks new ground in eighteenth-century studies of gender and genre, but it does so with great clarity, style, and grace. Looser's work is well researched and engagingly written, with chapters that focus in turn on several British women writers from the "long eighteenth century," including Lucy Hutchinson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Hester Lynch Piozzi, Jane Austen, Catharine Macaulay, and Charlotte Lennox. Students of history, literature, feminism, and the eighteenth century will find this book both informative and easy to read, and I especially recommend it to graduate students who are looking to expand their knowledge of one or all of these areas. The chapters on Macaulay and Piozzi are especially interesting because those writers may not be as familiar to readers as the more celebrated Austen or Montagu. As a professional academic who reads a great deal of scholarly material, I can say that this work truly excels in its field, and it is written in such a way that students and armchair enthusiasts will not find too obscure for their understanding while offering the kind of detail and insight that professional scholars expect in a critical text.