Nobody's Story : The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670-1920 / Catherine Gallagher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gallagher, Catherine, author.

Contributor:

American Council of Learned Societies.

Series:

New historicism ; 31.

The New Historicism ; Volume 31.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Sex role in literature.

Women and literature--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Women and literature.

Women and literature--Great Britain--History--18th century.

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

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiv, 339 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, California : University of California Press, [1995]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Exploring the careers of five influential women writers of the Restoration and eighteenth century, Catherine Gallagher reveals the connections between the increasing prestige of female authorship, the economy of credit and debt, and the rise of the novel. The "nobodies" of her title are not ignored, silenced, or anonymous women. Instead, they are literal nobodies: the abstractions of authorial personae, printed books, intellectual property rights, literary reputations, debts and obligations, and fictional characters. These are the exchangeable tokens of modern authorship that lent new cultural power to the increasing number of women writers through the eighteenth century. Women writers, Gallagher discovers, invented and popularized numerous ingenious similarities between their gender and their occupation. The terms "woman," "author," "marketplace," and "fiction" come to define each other reciprocally. Gallagher analyzes the provocative plays of Aphra Behn, the scandalous court chronicles of Delarivier Manley, the properly fictional nobodies of Charlotte Lennox and Frances Burney, and finally Maria Edgeworth's attempts in the late eighteenth century to reform the unruly genre of the novel.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Who Was That Masked Woman?

2. The Author-Monarch and the Royal Slave

3. Political Crimes and Fictional Alibis

4. Nobody's Credit

5. Nobody's Debt

6. The Changeling's Debt

Index

Notes:

"First paperback printing 1995"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780520917149

0520917146

9780585176567

0585176566

OCLC:

1153514878