R&L Logo R&L Logo
  • GENERAL
    • Browse by Subjects
    • New Releases
    • Coming Soon
    • Chases's Calendar
  • ACADEMIC
    • Textbooks
    • Browse by Course
    • Instructor's Copies
    • Monographs & Research
    • Reference
  • PROFESSIONAL
    • Education
    • Intelligence & Security
    • Library Services
    • Business & Leadership
    • Museum Studies
    • Music
    • Pastoral Resources
    • Psychotherapy
  • FREUD SET
Cover Image
Hardback
share of facebook share on twitter
Add to GoodReads

Novel Histories

British Women Writing History, 1760–1830

Lisa Kasmer

Novel Histories: British Women Writing History, 1760–1830 argues that British women’s history and historical fiction in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries changed not only the shape but also the political significance of women’s writing. At a time when women’s participation in the republic of letters was both celebrated and reviled, these authors took cues from developments that revolutionized British history writing to push the limits of narrated history to respond to contemporary national politics. Through an examination of the conventions of historical and literary genres; historiography during the period; and the gendering of civic and literary roles, this study shows not only a social, political, and literary lineage among women’s history writing and fiction but also among women’s writing and the writing of history.
  • Details
  • Details
  • Author
  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Pages: 198 • Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-1-61147-495-4 • Hardback • January 2012 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
Subjects: History / Europe / Great Britain / General, History / Europe / Western, History / Europe / General, History / Modern / 18th Century, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Women Authors
Lisa Kasmer is an associate professor of English at Clark University.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. The Literariness of History
1 “My heart will stand the test”: Catharine Macaulay and Sympathetic
History
II. Traditional Genre and Naive Historical Narrative
2 Political Critique inSophia Lee’s The Recess and Ann Yearsley’s Earl
Goodwin
III. The “Collapse” of History and the Imaginary
3 Helen Maria Williams and the “Regendering” of History
4 Jane Porter's Novel Histories: "Romancing" the British Nation
5 Mary Shelley's Foreclosed History in Valperga
IV. “Narrativity” and Feminist History
6 “The worthy associates of the best efforts of the best men”: Lucy Aikin’s
Epistles on Women and Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth
Conclusion: Histories that are Novel
Bibliography
Index
Kasmer (Clark Univ.) incorporates revisionary studies of both Enlightenment historiography and women's writing in her argument. These revisionary narratives complicate the intersection of genre and gender during the period and help to explain how women explored a variety of issues in fluid, complex literary forms. Genres such as the novel, the gothic tale, drama, and history helped women move from the domestic to the public sphere in ways that point to women's fuller participation in the republic of letters than has previously been understood. By contextualizing similarities in historiographical approach between British women writers and Enlightenment luminaries such as Hume and Kant, Kasmer calls attention to the unacknowledged complexity of these women as writers and thinkers. Such affinities are especially convincing proof of her claim that these women demand further critical attention, leading to perhaps the most interesting of her claims—that women writing history challenge the traditional period boundaries between 'eighteenth century' and 'Romantic' studies. The grandeur of this suggested reconceptualization points to the need for further large-scale consideration of these questions and their ramifications. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

— Choice Reviews


Lisa Kasmer’s [book] looks specifically at the contributions of British Romantic-era female historians, in the broadest sense of the term...[The] essays are vitally important in helping us to continue to expand our notions of what counts as history and in recovering women’s voices that were edged out of historical debates as history writing became professionalized. By helping to recover these voices, Kasmer broadens our understanding of British historiography during a crucial period of its development.
— Women's Writing


Lisa Kasmer's Novel Histories: British Women Writing History, 1790-1830 continues [the] trend [of] excavating women writers' roles in developing changing practices of historical scholarship. . . .both literary critics and historians of historiography should find this a suggestive study.
— Journal of British Studies


Lisa Kasmer's. . . book raise distinct questions as they add to recent work on how Romantic women prose writers engage with history. . . . Kasmer examines women writers of history, whether historical fiction or nonfiction biography and history, who wrote in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. ... Kasmer's Novel Histories brings narrative theory and historiography together to contribute to both fields. [This book] break[s] new ground in both text and genre, enlarging our understanding of Romantic women writers' pioneering contributions to the dynamic world of letters.
— European Romantic Review


This book contributes immensely to our understanding of various forms of historical writing during the long eighteenth century. Kasmer’s impressive and extensive skills as a researcher are evident here, as she works with both canonical and less well-known texts, bringing them together in fresh and interesting ways. Kasmer argues that in women’s historical writing during this period we see a strong influence of ideas of sympathy, often with the connection between sympathy and the formation of political communities, between domestic ideals and political action. The analysis of Williams’ Letters from France, Shelley’s Valperga, and Aikin’s Epistles on Women reveals all of these writers as sophisticated thinkers, aware of the way that sympathy and sensibility might be manipulated for rhetorical effect and to achieve certain political aims.
— Judith W. Page, Professor of English, University of Florida


In a series of astute theoretical moves and close textual readings, Lisa Kasmer's Novel Histories powerfully analyzes the intersection of gender, genre and politics in the emergence of female-authored historical narratives in this period. As she shows, history writing became a discursive arena whose generic fluidity, encompassing fiction, biography, poetry, and drama, challenged both the existing codes of gender and of political discourse. Supported by persuasive discussions of works by Catherine Macaulay, Helen Maria Williams, William Godwin, Ann Yearsley, Mary Shelley and Lucy Aikin, Kasmer's argument for the all-important impact of gender on history writing by both women and men takes us well beyond earlier work in this field. All scholars of literature, history and women's studies in this period will need to know this book.
— Anne K. Mellor, distinguished professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles


Lisa Kasmer's Novel Histories is an important book that will enrich our conversations about the relationships among literature, history, and politics in British women's writings. Looking with fresh eyes at texts from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Kasmer shows, in perceptive readings of works by Catharine Macaulay, Sophia Lee, Ann Yearsley, Helen Maria Williams, Jane Porter, Mary Shelley, and Lucy Aikin, how women writers innovated at a time when generic classifications were becoming just as restrictive as gender roles. Novel Histories provides a compelling argument for the necessity of returning to complicated past relationships between gender and genre, in order to create more politically nuanced literary histories today.
— Devoney Looser, Professor of English, University of Missouri


Novel Histories

British Women Writing History, 1760–1830

Cover Image
Hardback
Summary
Summary
  • Novel Histories: British Women Writing History, 1760–1830 argues that British women’s history and historical fiction in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries changed not only the shape but also the political significance of women’s writing. At a time when women’s participation in the republic of letters was both celebrated and reviled, these authors took cues from developments that revolutionized British history writing to push the limits of narrated history to respond to contemporary national politics. Through an examination of the conventions of historical and literary genres; historiography during the period; and the gendering of civic and literary roles, this study shows not only a social, political, and literary lineage among women’s history writing and fiction but also among women’s writing and the writing of history.
Details
Details
  • University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
    Pages: 198 • Trim: 6½ x 9½
    978-1-61147-495-4 • Hardback • January 2012 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
    Subjects: History / Europe / Great Britain / General, History / Europe / Western, History / Europe / General, History / Modern / 18th Century, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Women Authors
Author
Author
  • Lisa Kasmer is an associate professor of English at Clark University.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgments
    Introduction
    I. The Literariness of History
    1 “My heart will stand the test”: Catharine Macaulay and Sympathetic
    History
    II. Traditional Genre and Naive Historical Narrative
    2 Political Critique inSophia Lee’s The Recess and Ann Yearsley’s Earl
    Goodwin
    III. The “Collapse” of History and the Imaginary
    3 Helen Maria Williams and the “Regendering” of History
    4 Jane Porter's Novel Histories: "Romancing" the British Nation
    5 Mary Shelley's Foreclosed History in Valperga
    IV. “Narrativity” and Feminist History
    6 “The worthy associates of the best efforts of the best men”: Lucy Aikin’s
    Epistles on Women and Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth
    Conclusion: Histories that are Novel
    Bibliography
    Index
Reviews
Reviews
  • Kasmer (Clark Univ.) incorporates revisionary studies of both Enlightenment historiography and women's writing in her argument. These revisionary narratives complicate the intersection of genre and gender during the period and help to explain how women explored a variety of issues in fluid, complex literary forms. Genres such as the novel, the gothic tale, drama, and history helped women move from the domestic to the public sphere in ways that point to women's fuller participation in the republic of letters than has previously been understood. By contextualizing similarities in historiographical approach between British women writers and Enlightenment luminaries such as Hume and Kant, Kasmer calls attention to the unacknowledged complexity of these women as writers and thinkers. Such affinities are especially convincing proof of her claim that these women demand further critical attention, leading to perhaps the most interesting of her claims—that women writing history challenge the traditional period boundaries between 'eighteenth century' and 'Romantic' studies. The grandeur of this suggested reconceptualization points to the need for further large-scale consideration of these questions and their ramifications. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

    — Choice Reviews


    Lisa Kasmer’s [book] looks specifically at the contributions of British Romantic-era female historians, in the broadest sense of the term...[The] essays are vitally important in helping us to continue to expand our notions of what counts as history and in recovering women’s voices that were edged out of historical debates as history writing became professionalized. By helping to recover these voices, Kasmer broadens our understanding of British historiography during a crucial period of its development.
    — Women's Writing


    Lisa Kasmer's Novel Histories: British Women Writing History, 1790-1830 continues [the] trend [of] excavating women writers' roles in developing changing practices of historical scholarship. . . .both literary critics and historians of historiography should find this a suggestive study.
    — Journal of British Studies


    Lisa Kasmer's. . . book raise distinct questions as they add to recent work on how Romantic women prose writers engage with history. . . . Kasmer examines women writers of history, whether historical fiction or nonfiction biography and history, who wrote in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. ... Kasmer's Novel Histories brings narrative theory and historiography together to contribute to both fields. [This book] break[s] new ground in both text and genre, enlarging our understanding of Romantic women writers' pioneering contributions to the dynamic world of letters.
    — European Romantic Review


    This book contributes immensely to our understanding of various forms of historical writing during the long eighteenth century. Kasmer’s impressive and extensive skills as a researcher are evident here, as she works with both canonical and less well-known texts, bringing them together in fresh and interesting ways. Kasmer argues that in women’s historical writing during this period we see a strong influence of ideas of sympathy, often with the connection between sympathy and the formation of political communities, between domestic ideals and political action. The analysis of Williams’ Letters from France, Shelley’s Valperga, and Aikin’s Epistles on Women reveals all of these writers as sophisticated thinkers, aware of the way that sympathy and sensibility might be manipulated for rhetorical effect and to achieve certain political aims.
    — Judith W. Page, Professor of English, University of Florida


    In a series of astute theoretical moves and close textual readings, Lisa Kasmer's Novel Histories powerfully analyzes the intersection of gender, genre and politics in the emergence of female-authored historical narratives in this period. As she shows, history writing became a discursive arena whose generic fluidity, encompassing fiction, biography, poetry, and drama, challenged both the existing codes of gender and of political discourse. Supported by persuasive discussions of works by Catherine Macaulay, Helen Maria Williams, William Godwin, Ann Yearsley, Mary Shelley and Lucy Aikin, Kasmer's argument for the all-important impact of gender on history writing by both women and men takes us well beyond earlier work in this field. All scholars of literature, history and women's studies in this period will need to know this book.
    — Anne K. Mellor, distinguished professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles


    Lisa Kasmer's Novel Histories is an important book that will enrich our conversations about the relationships among literature, history, and politics in British women's writings. Looking with fresh eyes at texts from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Kasmer shows, in perceptive readings of works by Catharine Macaulay, Sophia Lee, Ann Yearsley, Helen Maria Williams, Jane Porter, Mary Shelley, and Lucy Aikin, how women writers innovated at a time when generic classifications were becoming just as restrictive as gender roles. Novel Histories provides a compelling argument for the necessity of returning to complicated past relationships between gender and genre, in order to create more politically nuanced literary histories today.
    — Devoney Looser, Professor of English, University of Missouri


ALSO AVAILABLE

  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the British Monarchy, Second Edition
  • Cover image for the book The Norman Conquest: England after William the Conqueror
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the British Empire
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the Contemporary United Kingdom
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the British Monarchy
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of Anglo-American Relations
  • Cover image for the book Tomb of the Eagles: Death and Life in a Stone Age Tribe
  • Cover image for the book British Chimney Sweeps: Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping
  • Cover image for the book The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Life of the Society
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, September 1874 - June 1875, Volume 10
  • Cover image for the book The Life of Anne Damer: Portrait of a Regency Artist
  • Cover image for the book Charlotte Lennox: Correspondence and Miscellaneous Documents
  • Cover image for the book Working Class Heroes: Rock Music and British Society in the 1960s and 1970s
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, January 1873 - June 1873, Volume 7
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, April 1872 - July 1872
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, January 1874 - August 1874, Volume 9
  • Cover image for the book Health and British Magazines in the Nineteenth Century: An Annotated Bibliography
  • Cover image for the book Seize, Burn, or Sink: The Thoughts and Words of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson
  • Cover image for the book Queen Anne and the Arts
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, June 1880 - December 1880, Volume 16
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, January 1880 - June 1880, Volume 15
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, June 1879 - December 1879, Volume 14
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, June 1878 - May 1879, Volume 13
  • Cover image for the book Diggers, Levellers, and Agrarian Capitalism: Radical Political Thought in 17th Century England
  • Cover image for the book The A to Z of British Intelligence
  • Cover image for the book Manufacturers Of Literature: Writing and the Literary Marketplace in Eighteenth-Century England
  • Cover image for the book The Life And Times Of Goldsworthy: Gentleman Scientist and Inventor 1793-1875
  • Cover image for the book Political Speaking Justified: Women Prophets And the English Revolution
  • Cover image for the book The Human Tradition in Modern Britain
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the British and Irish Civil Wars 1637-1660, Second Edition
  • Cover image for the book The African-British Long Eighteenth Century: An Analysis of African-British Treaties, Colonial Economics, and Anthropological Discourse
  • Cover image for the book The Restoration Mind
  • Cover image for the book Churchill's Military Histories: A Rhetorical Study
  • Cover image for the book Thomas Violet, a Sly and Dangerous Fellow: Silver and Spying in Civil War London
  • Cover image for the book Psychoanalysis in Britain, 1893–1913: Histories and Historiography
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the British Monarchy, Second Edition
  • Cover image for the book The Norman Conquest: England after William the Conqueror
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the British Empire
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the Contemporary United Kingdom
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the British Monarchy
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of Anglo-American Relations
  • Cover image for the book Tomb of the Eagles: Death and Life in a Stone Age Tribe
  • Cover image for the book British Chimney Sweeps: Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping
  • Cover image for the book The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Life of the Society
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, September 1874 - June 1875, Volume 10
  • Cover image for the book The Life of Anne Damer: Portrait of a Regency Artist
  • Cover image for the book Charlotte Lennox: Correspondence and Miscellaneous Documents
  • Cover image for the book Working Class Heroes: Rock Music and British Society in the 1960s and 1970s
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, January 1873 - June 1873, Volume 7
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, April 1872 - July 1872
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, January 1874 - August 1874, Volume 9
  • Cover image for the book Health and British Magazines in the Nineteenth Century: An Annotated Bibliography
  • Cover image for the book Seize, Burn, or Sink: The Thoughts and Words of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson
  • Cover image for the book Queen Anne and the Arts
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, June 1880 - December 1880, Volume 16
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, January 1880 - June 1880, Volume 15
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, June 1879 - December 1879, Volume 14
  • Cover image for the book Emigration from the United Kingdom to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, June 1878 - May 1879, Volume 13
  • Cover image for the book Diggers, Levellers, and Agrarian Capitalism: Radical Political Thought in 17th Century England
  • Cover image for the book The A to Z of British Intelligence
  • Cover image for the book Manufacturers Of Literature: Writing and the Literary Marketplace in Eighteenth-Century England
  • Cover image for the book The Life And Times Of Goldsworthy: Gentleman Scientist and Inventor 1793-1875
  • Cover image for the book Political Speaking Justified: Women Prophets And the English Revolution
  • Cover image for the book The Human Tradition in Modern Britain
  • Cover image for the book Historical Dictionary of the British and Irish Civil Wars 1637-1660, Second Edition
  • Cover image for the book The African-British Long Eighteenth Century: An Analysis of African-British Treaties, Colonial Economics, and Anthropological Discourse
  • Cover image for the book The Restoration Mind
  • Cover image for the book Churchill's Military Histories: A Rhetorical Study
  • Cover image for the book Thomas Violet, a Sly and Dangerous Fellow: Silver and Spying in Civil War London
  • Cover image for the book Psychoanalysis in Britain, 1893–1913: Histories and Historiography
facebook icon twitter icon instagram icon linked in icon NEWSLETTERS
ABOUT US
  • Mission Statement
  • Employment
  • Privacy
  • Accessibility Statement
CONTACT
  • Company Directory
  • Publicity and Media Queries
  • Rights and Permissions
  • Textbook Resource Center
AUTHOR RESOURCES
  • Royalty Contact
  • Production Guidelines
  • Manuscript Submissions
ORDERING INFORMATION
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • National Book Network
  • Ingram Publisher Services UK
  • Special Sales
  • International Sales
  • eBook Partners
  • Digital Catalogs
IMPRINTS
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • Lexington Books
  • Hamilton Books
  • Applause Books
  • Amadeus Press
  • Backbeat Books
  • Bernan
  • Hal Leonard Books
  • Limelight Editions
  • Co-Publishing Partners
  • Globe Pequot
  • Down East Books
  • Falcon Guides
  • Gooseberry Patch
  • Lyons Press
  • Muddy Boots
  • Pineapple Press
  • TwoDot Books
  • Stackpole Books
PARTNERS
  • American Alliance of Museums
  • American Association for State and Local History
  • Brookings Institution Press
  • Center for Strategic & International Studies
  • Council on Foreign Relations
  • Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
  • Fortress Press
  • The Foundation for Critical Thinking
  • Lehigh University Press
  • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • Other Partners...