Writing double : women's literary partnerships / Bette London.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

London, Bette.

Series:

Reading women writing.

Reading women writing

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

English literature.

Women and literature--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Women and literature.

Women and literature--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Authorship--Collaboration--History.

Authorship.

Spirit writings--Authorship.

Spirit writings.

Women mediums--Biography.

Women mediums.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (248 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Although Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault announced the death of the author several decades ago, critics have been slow to abandon the idea of the solitary writer. Bette London maintains that this notion has blinded us to the reality that writing is seldom an individual activity and that it has led us to overlook both the frequency with which women authors have worked together and the significance of their collaborative undertakings as a form of professional activity. In Writing Double, the first full-length treatment of women's literary partnerships, she goes to the heart of issues surrounding authorial identity. What is an author? Which forms of authorship are sanctioned and which forms marginalized? Which of these forms have particularly attracted women? Such questions are central to London's analysis of the challenge that women's literary collaboration presents to accepted notions of authorship. Focusing on British texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she considers a fascinating variety of works by largely noncanonical, and in some instances highly unconventional, authors-from the enormously popular novels composed by writing teams at the turn of the century, to the Brontë juvenilia and the occult scripts of Georgie Yeats and W. B. Yeats, to automatic writings produced by mediums purporting to be in communication with the spirit world.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Seeing Double

1. Secret Writing The Bronte Juvenilia And The Myth Of Solitary Genius

2. "Something Obscurely Repellent" The Resistance To Double Writing

3. Two Of A Trade Partners In Writing (1880-1930)

4. Writing At The Margins Collaboration And The Discourse Of Exoticism

5. The Scribe And The Lady Automatic Writing And The Trials Of Authorship

6. Romancing The Medium The Silent Partnership Of Georgie Yeats

Afterword Ghostwriting; Or. The Afterlife Of Authorship / Yeats, Georgie

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-8014-7466-3

OCLC:

70764540