Women and Music in the Age of Austen

Women and Music in the Age of Austen highlights women’s central role in musical performance, composition, reception, and representation, and analyzes their formative and lasting effect upon Georgian culture. This interdisciplinary collection of essays reveals how music allowed for women’s self-expression, artistic influence, and access to communities that transcended the boundaries of gender, class, and nationality.

 

Women and Music in the Age of Austen highlights the central role women played in musical performance, composition, reception, and representation, and analyzes its formative and lasting effect on Georgian culture. This interdisciplinary collection of essays from musicology, literary studies, and gender studies challenges the conventional historical categories that marginalize women’s experience from Austen’s time. Contesting the distinctions between professional and amateur musicians, public and domestic sites of musical production, and performers and composers of music, the contributors reveal how women’s widespread involvement in the Georgian musical scene allowed for self-expression, artistic influence, and access to communities that transcended the boundaries of gender, class, and nationality. This volume’s breadth of focus advances our understanding of a period that witnessed a musical flourishing, much of it animated by female hands and voices.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.