Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1690-1820s

'This book comprehensively overturns assumptions about women's exclusion from the business of eighteenth-century periodical print. From fan fiction to fashion design, from literary reviewing to pedagogic theory, female creativity is evident everywhere. Batchelor and Powell's collection is as visually and verbally rich as their subject.' Ros Ballaster, Mansfield College, University of Oxford Provides new perspectives on women's print media in the long eighteenth century This innovative volume presents for the first time collective expertise on women's magazines and periodicals of the long eighteenth century. While this period witnessed the birth of modern periodical culture and its ability to shape aspects of society from the popular to the political, most studies have traditionally obscured the very active role women's voices and women readers played in shaping the periodicals that in turn shaped Britain. The 30 essays here demonstrate the importance of periodicals to women, the importance of women to periodicals, and, crucially, they correct the destructive misconception that the more canonised periodicals and popular magazines were rival or discontinuous forms. This collection shows how both periodicals and women drove debates on politics, education, theatre, celebrity, social practice, popular reading and everyday life itself. Divided into 6 thematic parts, the book uses innovative methodologies for historical periodical studies, mapping new directions in eighteenth-century and Romantic studies, women's writing as well as media and cultural history. Jennie Batchelor is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Kent. She is the author of Women's Work: Labour, Gender, Authorship, 1750-1830 (2014) as well as a number of publications on eighteenth-century periodicals and the histories of gender, sexuality and writing. Manushag N. Powell is Associate Professor of English and University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University. She is the author of Performing Authorship in Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals (2012) and has published on periodical form and periodical studies as well as on British literary pirates. Cover image: Female Lucubration, John Foldsone print made by Philip Dawe published by John Bowles, 1772 (c) The Trustees of the British Museum Cover design: www.hayesdesign.co.uk [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-1965-9 Barcode