When first published in 1977, A Literature of Their Own quickly set the stage for the creative explosion of feminist literary studies that transformed the field in the 1980s. Launching a major new area for literary investigation, the book uncovered the long but neglected tradition of women writers in England. A classic of feminist criticism, its impact continues to be felt today. This revised and expanded edition contains a new introductory chapter surveying the book's reception and a new postscript chapter celebrating the legacy of feminism and feminist criticism in the efflorescence of contemporary British fiction by women.
Acknowledgments to the Expanded EditionAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Twenty Years On: A Literature of Their Own RevisitedIThe Female Tradition3IIThe Feminine Novelists and the Will to Write37IIIThe Double Critical Standard and the Feminine Novel73IVFeminine Heroines: Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot100VFeminine Heroes: The Woman's Man133VISubverting the Feminine Novel: Sensationalism and Feminine Protest153VIIThe Feminist Novelists182VIIIWomen Writers and the Suffrage Movement216IXThe Female Aesthetic240XVirginia Woolf and the Flight into Androgyny263XIBeyond the Female Aesthetic: Contemporary Women Novelists298XIILaughing Medusa320Index337
