Women Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Behn to Burney
 
      A man in petticoats? The sign of an advanced society? A prostitute? A respectable professional? From the Restoration in 1660 to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, women and men debated what to make of a woman who took up the pen. And suddenly such women were everywhere. Elite women had always circulated letters and poems in manuscript; others had published prayers and recipes. But with the re-opened playhouses in 1660, improved literacy, and a growing commercial print market, middle-class and labouring women were increasingly able to get poems printed, and even become professional authors. Over the century, hundreds of women published plays, treatises, poetry, essays, and fiction. This course focuses on ten of those writers.
      The course is divided into four modules. We begin with a couple of playwrights and a philosopher – Aphra Behn (considered the first professional woman writer), Susanna Centlivre, and Mary Astell, who argued about whether marriage was worth it for women. The second module looks at women poets, from aristocrats to labouring-class writers. Key writers here are Anne Finch, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Mary Leapor. The third module focuses on the Bluestocking movement–women such as Elizabeth Montagu who networked to advocate for female education and influence. Here students will have a chance to work with never-studied manuscript poems by the mystery poet Mrs. Wilmot. Module four will consider two women who led the way in the development of the novel: Eliza Haywood and Frances Burney.
     

Black, et al, ed. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 3 (The
   Restoration and the Eighteenth Century). 2nd ed. Broadview.

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