Women's Literary Networks and Media Cultures in the Long Eighteenth Century (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850)

This pathbreaking collection features original essays by leading scholars working at the intersections of women’s literary history, book history, and media cultures. Drawing on underexplored archives and innovative methodologies―from feminist bibliography to digital humanities―the contributors generate new narratives about the long eighteenth century and the centrality of gender to its literary production. Moving beyond a narrow focus on authorship, the chapters recover women as writers and readers, editors and curators, printers and book owners, scholars, preachers, and political actors. Across print, manuscript, and oral cultures, they illuminate the collaborative networks and material conditions shaping cultural production and circulation. Organized into sections on print histories, manuscript cultures, and new methodological approaches, this collection reshapes eighteenth-century studies while modeling ethically engaged archival research. Accessible and wide-ranging, it will appeal to scholars and students in literary studies, women’s and gender studies, and book history alike.Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Read more