The Cambridge History of Women and British Romanticism

Examining the vibrant era of British Romanticism from the perspective of women, this History places contested notions of gender and genre into productive dialogue to explore how women's creativity across a range of media – including but not limited to writing – fostered change and constructed the first body of feminist thought.

Highlighting the vibrancy and courage of women's contributions to the cultural politics of the Romantic era, this History explores – from the perspective of women – the period's British incarnations to demonstrate how female accomplishment challenged secondary social status and initiated an early form of feminist protest and gender study. Separate chapters examine the media that women used – including (but not limited to) song, music, needlework, drawing, and empirical experimentation – and the range of venues and locales where they performed their gender identities and cultural assessments. While making space for writers, writing, and textual literacy, the History resists prevalent bias toward these media as agents of social transformation, prioritizing instead collective, improvisatorial, and embodied modes of creativity and protest. Recognizing the contested nature of both 'British Romanticism' and 'women' in today's critical discourse, this major work puts these two constructed entities into dialogue to explore the history and evolution of their creative critical interactions.