Women, Gender, and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Essays in Memory of Betty Rizzo

Edited by Temma Berg and Sonia Kane

This edited collection, a tribute to the late noted eighteenth-century scholar Betty Rizzo, testifies to her influence as a researcher, writer, teacher, and mentor. The essays, written by a range of established and younger eighteenth-century specialists, expand on the themes important to Rizzo: the importance of the archive, the contributions of women writers to the canon of eighteenth-century literature and to an emerging print culture, the sometimes fraught relations within the eighteenth-century family, the relationship between life and literature, and, finally, the role of female companionship in women’s lives. Divided into three sections, “Living in the Eighteenth-Century Novel,” “Living in the Eighteenth-Century World,” and “Afterlives,” the fourteen essays that form the body of the collection treat such topics as epistolarity, fraternal relations in novels and in families, women and travel in Jane Austen’s novels, the pleasures and challenges of searching through archives to understand the complex entanglements of eighteenth-century families, the changing reception of Alexander Pope’s poetry, and intersections among race, class, gender, and sexuality in a famous early-nineteenth-century Scottish libel case. The final essay of the fourteen connects the archetypal eighteenth-century figure of the seduced and abandoned woman to Sophie Calle’s 2007 Venice Biennale exhibition entitled Take Care of Yourself, which the author reads as a direct descendant of the eighteenth-century letter novel.The book is framed by an introduction that situates the book as part of the ongoing redefinition of the archive of eighteenth-century literature and an afterword that gives a personal account of Rizzo’s career and her indelible legacy as friend, mentor, and professional model. The contributors use a variety of methods in their scholarship, but a common strand is archival research and close reading inflected by feminist analysis. The book will appeal to students and scholars of eighteenth-century British literature and culture and to those interested in women’s writing and women’s relationships in the eighteenth century—and today—and in feminist literary history. The contributors to the volume practice the kind of scholarship Rizzo was known for—painstaking archival research and attention to the nuances of relationships among eighteenth-century women (and men)—and in so doing shed new light on a number of familiar and not-so-familiar eighteenth-century texts.

University Press Copublishing Division / Lehigh University Press

Pages: 350 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61146-141-1 • Hardback • October 2013 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-1-61146-142-8 • eBook • October 2013 • $126.00 • (£97.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Collections / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Collections / Essays, Literary Criticism / Women Authors

Women, Gender, and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Essays in Memory of Betty Rizzo

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This edited collection, a tribute to the late noted eighteenth-century scholar Betty Rizzo, testifies to her influence as a researcher, writer, teacher, and mentor. The essays, written by a range of established and younger eighteenth-century specialists, expand on the themes important to Rizzo: the importance of the archive, the contributions of women writers to the canon of eighteenth-century literature and to an emerging print culture, the sometimes fraught relations within the eighteenth-century family, the relationship between life and literature, and, finally, the role of female companionship in women’s lives. Divided into three sections, “Living in the Eighteenth-Century Novel,” “Living in the Eighteenth-Century World,” and “Afterlives,” the fourteen essays that form the body of the collection treat such topics as epistolarity, fraternal relations in novels and in families, women and travel in Jane Austen’s novels, the pleasures and challenges of searching through archives to understand the complex entanglements of eighteenth-century families, the changing reception of Alexander Pope’s poetry, and intersections among race, class, gender, and sexuality in a famous early-nineteenth-century Scottish libel case. The final essay of the fourteen connects the archetypal eighteenth-century figure of the seduced and abandoned woman to Sophie Calle’s 2007 Venice Biennale exhibition entitled Take Care of Yourself, which the author reads as a direct descendant of the eighteenth-century letter novel.The book is framed by an introduction that situates the book as part of the ongoing redefinition of the archive of eighteenth-century literature and an afterword that gives a personal account of Rizzo’s career and her indelible legacy as friend, mentor, and professional model. The contributors use a variety of methods in their scholarship, but a common strand is archival research and close reading inflected by feminist analysis. The book will appeal to students and scholars of eighteenth-century British literature and culture and to those interested in women’s writing and women’s relationships in the eighteenth century—and today—and in feminist literary history. The contributors to the volume practice the kind of scholarship Rizzo was known for—painstaking archival research and attention to the nuances of relationships among eighteenth-century women (and men)—and in so doing shed new light on a number of familiar and not-so-familiar eighteenth-century texts.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Lehigh University Press

Pages: 350 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61146-141-1 • Hardback • October 2013 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-1-61146-142-8 • eBook • October 2013 • $126.00 • (£97.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Collections / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Collections / Essays, Literary Criticism / Women Authors

Author

Temma Berg is Graeff Professor of English Literature at Gettysburg College.
Sonia Kane is editorial director of The University of Rochester Press.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Introduction by Temma Berg
Part One: Living in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
Clarissa’s Darkness by Toni Bowers
Brotherly Love in Eighteenth-Century Literature by Ruth Perry
“Queernesses” Remembered: Male-Female Friendship in Emma by George E. Haggerty
Sarah Fielding’s The Governess: A Gloss on her “Books upon Education” by Sylvia Kasey Marks
Part Two: Living in the Eighteenth-Century World
“I have travelled so little”: Jane Austen’s Women on the Road by Stephanie Oppenheim
Lady Minto and Her Lord by Elizabeth Lambert
Sarah Scott, Elizabeth Montagu, and the Familiar Letter in Dialogue by Nicole Pohl and Betty A. Schellenberg
Hidden Talents: Women Writers in the Burney Family by Lorna J. Clark
“Moving upon glass”: The Madness of Lady Frances Coningsby by Mary Margaret Stewart
Part Three: Afterlives
“Admiring Pope no more than is Proper”: Romanticizing Alexander Pope in Late-Eighteenth-Century Booksellers’ Beauties by Barbara M. Benedict
Hester Lynch Piozzi’s British Synonymy and the “notion of a sex in words” by Lisa Berglund
Taking the Baltic Merchant: At Sea through the Archives by Temma Berg
The Girl Who Raged and Her Virago of a Grandmother: A Co-Biography of Jane Cumming and Dame Helen Cumming Gordon by Frances B. Singh
Remediating Interpretation: Sophie Calle Rewrites Epistolarity by Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook
Afterword
“A New and Braver Point to Make”: Parting Thoughts on the Brilliant Career of a Master Teacher-Scholar by Beverly Schneller
Contributor Biographies
Index

Reviews

Rizzo published student textbooks on writing as well as the eighteenth century work she is best known for, and . . . the essays in this collection are notable for the lucidity of their style, their resistance to jargon, and the strength and clarity of their arguments. This collection is a worthy monument to her.
— Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Every chapter in this collection adds something valuable to our knowledge of the period. More important, by reflecting the pleasures of archival research and the importance of clear prose and careful reading, they provide an affirmation of the importance of our work and models for our students. Betty Rizzo is well served by her friends and former students.
— The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer