Women, Scholarship and Criticism C. 1790-1900

Book excerpt: This innovative volume explores a wide range of artistic, critical, and cultural productions by women scholars, critics, and artists between 1790 and 1900, many of whom are little known. The essays question the concepts of “scholarship,” “criticism,” and “artist” across different disciplines, focusing on the gendered associations and exclusions and on structures of sexual difference. Women discussed include Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Sydney Morgan, and Anna Jameson; actresses such as Elizabeth Siddons, Dorothy Jordan, and Mary Robinson; critics such as Margaret Oliphant and Mary Cowden Clarke; historians such as Agnes Strickland, Lucy Aikin, Mary Anne Everett Green, Elizabeth Cooper, and Lucy Toulmin Smith; the writers and readers of women's magazines; educationalists such as the Shirreff sisters, and translators such as Anna Swanwick, as well as many others.