Revamping Literary History

Abstract

Both books under review here are about women writers of the eighteenth century: Susan Carlile's edited collection, Masters of the Marketplace, focuses on four from the 1750s—Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Lennox, Sarah Scott, and Sarah Fielding—and Jennie Batchelor, in her Women's Work: Labour, Gender, Authorship, 1750-1830 compares the women authors of this decade to those later in the century. Carlile's collection insists on how professionally successful these writers women were, and how influential in determining the direction of the novel. Batchelor investigates how women thought about their literary labors and how these perceptions evolved over the course of the century. Both books seek to augment traditionally male-centered literary history and to provide new ways of understanding the contribution of gender to the construction of the novel.