Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900: An Anthology of Criticism

Description

"Women reading Shakespeare, 1660-1900" comprehensively rediscovers a lost tradition of women's writing on Shakespeare. Since Margaret Cavendish published the first critical essay on Shakespeare in 1664, women have written as scholars, critics, editors, performers and popularisers of Shakespeare. many found in Shakespeare criticism the opportunity to raise a wide variety of issues, ranging from the use of women in society, family life, social relations and ethnic difference. In their different ways, women appropriated Shakespeare to their own ends - not always in step with their male contemporaries. Virtually none of this work is available today; it is unread and unknown. This anthology draws upon extensive new research to collect for the first time in one volume the Shakespeare criticism of some fifty British and American women writing before 1900. it includes the work of both familiar and unknown names and represents the diversity of literary genres used by women: the scholarly article, the periodical essay, book-length studies, personal memoirs, book for children, school editions.

Ann Thompson is Professor of English and Head of the English Department at Roehampton Institute, London Sasha Roberts taught at the University of Kent -- .