A Jury Of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx

Description

Fascinating, incisive, intelligent and never afraid of being controversial, Elaine Showalter introduces us to more than 250 writers. Here are the famous and expected names, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Willa Cather, Dorothy Parker, Flannery O Connor, Gwendolyn Brooks, Grace Paley, Toni Morrison, and Jodi Picoult. And also many successful and acclaimed yet little-known writers, from the early American bestselling novelist Catherine Sedgwick to the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Susan Glaspell. A JURY OF HER PEERS is an irresistible invitation to discover great authors never before encountered and to return to familiar books with a deeper appreciation. It is a monumental work that enriches our understanding of American literary history and culture.

Elaine Showalter was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1941. From 1967 to 1984 she taught English and Women's Studies at Rutgers University, and she now chairs the department of English at Princeton University.

In the realm of spectacular literary scholarship and criticism there has been nothing to approach Elaine Showalter's magisterial A Jury Of Her Peers. Showalter is the ideal guide through this maze-like landscape: she is sympathetic, informed, canny and at times very funny - as in her commentary on Gertrude Stein. This is the most imaginative and brilliantly executed book of Showalter's fearless career - Joyce Carol Oates, Guardian, Books of the Year A superb literary survey - Sunday Times The first comprehensive overview of the achievement of American women writers . . . A daunting task, and few could carry it off with such aplomb . . . She magisterially offers judicious assessment, adroit synopsis and astonishing breadth and range of reference - Sarah Churchwell, Guardian An authoritative study of American female literary production . . . A woman writer's female peers can best understand and judge her words - and Showalter is your woman. There is no other critic who could produce such a clear, seamless history of women's - Helen Taylor, Independent