Bibliography

Backscheider, Paula R. Spectacular Politics: Theatrical Power and Mass Culture in Early Modern England. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Through theater, Backscheider examines the connection between literature and cultural activity by analyzing popular texts from pivotal historical moments. Her interest rests particularly on the 1695-1699 theater season, where one-third of all the plays performed on London stages were written by women. Her goals are to understand how sex and gender are constituted and used as political categories, as the public sphere moves towards a more highly gendered space. She breaks her analysis of women into three divisions--women used as tropes for unauthorized forms of power; women's nature, position, and value and aspiration at issue in relationships; and women as emblems of seductive philosophy. In addition to other authors, she takes an extensive look at the work of Aphra Behn and the roles she created for women as a playwright.

Carnell, Rachell. "It's Not Easy Being Green: Gender and Friendship in Eliza Haywood's Political Periodicals." Eigtheenth Century Studies. 32.2 (1998-1999): 199-214. Carnell uses the writings of Eliza Haywood, specifically her Female Spectator and The Parrot, to compare these female writings to their male counterparts. She investigates what part gender plays in the literary-political commentary of the eighteenth century. This relates to men's need for male-male friendships within coffeehouse culture, and signifies women's necessity for equal bonds with women.

Faderman, Lillian., ed.Chloe plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. New York: Viking, 1994. This text is again a collection of female poets and their work, focusing on representations of lesbian desire from the early modern period to the present. Katharine Philips is the first entry in the Anthology, beginning a long history of lesbianism in female friendship and poetry.

Greer, Germaine, et. al., eds. Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women's Verse. London: Virago, 1988. This is a collection of seventeenth century female poets and their work. Each section of the book is devoted to an author, and begins with biographical information. It is followed by examples of work with commentary and textual notes.

Haywood, Eliza. Selections from The Female Spectator. Ed. Patricia Meyer Spacks. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. A foreward by the editor explains the importance of eigthteenth century female literature, which leads into an introduction of Haywood's life and work. This introduction contains information about Haywood's life and literary career. It also examines the goals and didactic lessons of The Female Spectator. It then contains Books I-XXIV of Haywood's popular periodical for women, The Female Spectator.

Jones, Vivian ed. Women and Literature in Britain 1700-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. This collection of essays addresses the changing roles of women during the eighteenth century, and specifically their increased contribution to the literary world. This initial examination goes on the analyze how their interactions with literature influenced their degree of education and literacy, and eventually their political and social positions. This text also inludes a detailed Chronology, which not only lists important historical events and dates, but the corresponding links that were published during that year.

Lanser, Susan S. "Befriending the Body: Female Intimacies as Class Acts." Eighteenth Century Studies 32.2 (1998-1999): 179-198. Lanser examines how women in exclusive, homoerotic relationships came to be accepted and sometimes even revered, at a time when, historically, marriage and motherhood were the prescribed norm. She delves into the emergence of friendship as a public phenomenon, alongside the idea of choosing friends instead of choiceless bonds of kin. Her main argument focuses on the intersection of gender, class, and public power as a system to maintain and establish friendship. Also discussed is the importance of language used in describing these relationships, as sexual connections were often ignored in favor of a more platonic "sisterhood" idea.

Manley, Delariviere. Novels1705-1714. Fascimilie Vol.I. Ed. Koster, Patricia. Gainseville:Scholar's Facsimilies & Reprints, 1971. After a brief introduction of Manley's life and work, this book presents fascimilies of Manley's original work. It includes The Secret History of Queen Zarah, The New Atlantis, Memoirs of Europe, and The Adventures of Rivella.

Mintz, Susannah B. "Katharine Phillips and the Space of Friendship." Restoration 22.2 (1998): 62-78. Mintz's work focuseson the letters and poems of Katharine Phillips and their significant role in the idea of female friendship. She testifies to the numerous images of enclosure that Philips uses to represent both the "engrossing intensity of affection between women and the difficulty of maintaining that affection." Mintz discusses the ways in which Philips writes space into her poems, thus releasing women from some of their lacking range of motion. She also spends time on the affect of having the speaker and subject of a poem as women, and the numerous fears that impinge upon the space of friendship. In the end, Mintz concludes that many of Philip's techniques worked to undermine the standard system and norms.

Rogers, Katharine M. Feminisim in Eighteenth-Century England. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1982. This text traces the development of English feminism in the Eighteenth Century, beginning with a discussion of the general situation of women in the early 1700s (including their marital, societal, professional, and financial status). This discussion leads into how the Rationalist and Sentimentalist movements became catalysts for the Feminist Movement. It incorporates a literary element into this history of Feminism in its reference to Feminism's different forms of expression. Since women had no other forum with which to air their views, they did so through poems, letters, and plays. This book specifically looks to the works of Behn, Montagu, Finch, and others, and examines in depth the birth of the Feminine Novel.

Thomas, Patrick. Katharine Philips ('Orinda'). Wales: University of Wales Press, 1988. This text examines Katharine Philips as one of the great writers of Wales. It contains biographical information, poems, and excerpts of letters. There is an extensive bibliography of Philips's work.

Wahl, Susan Elizabeth. Invisible Relations: Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. This book examineshow female intimacy, specifically homoerotic intimacy, was viewed, ignored, persecuted, and sustained during the eighteenth century. It examines how female intimacy was portratyed in literature, and how this portrayal was representative of society's attitudes towards it. The book shows how society's attitudes resulted in two different ideals of female intimacy: sexualized intimacy (which was a notion of sexual intimacy between women, one that was detrimental to society and was warned against, regulated, and at times even denied) and idealized intimacy (one that was "culturally sanctioned," a version of female friendship that was thought to be influenced by a trend towards domesticity and nuclear families in the time period).

 

 

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