Bluestocking Women and the Negotiation of Oral, Manuscript, and Print Cultures

This essay provides an overview of recent contributions to the field of manuscript studies in the long eighteenth century. Although a number of early (and some contemporary) scholars have read print as the primary written form during the long eighteenth century, most researchers today acknowledge that manuscript traditions persisted despite the advent of print; recent scholarship reads them as complementary, where manuscript is no longer subsumed by print culture. This increased valuation of manuscript culture has shaped our understandings of literary and non‐literary genres and even the concept of authorship itself. This essay discusses the foundations and methodologies of manuscript studies of the eighteenth century, which arise out of the fields of bibliography and textual studies and corresponding developments in the early modern period. The latter part of the essay surveys some of the recent developments and directions of the field, including the intersecting disciplines of women's studies, genre theory, and readership and authorship practices.

Section: Research Directionsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Manuscript studies and the eighteenth century

Havens¹

2019

“…According to Havens, “[o]ne of the most fruitful directions of eighteenth‐century manuscript studies is its intersections with gender, especially in investigations of literary networks and coteries” (p. 4). Citing scholarship by Melanie Bigold (2013), George Justice and Nathan Tinker (2002), Kathryn R. King, Betty A. Schellenberg (2016) and others that follow Ezell's (1999) groundbreaking work, Havens describes how awareness of manuscript circulation as a deliberate choice made by women throughout the eighteenth century challenges and recalibrates understandings of the supposed dominance of print (pp. 4–5).…”

Section: Manuscript and Print Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Women and the book in Britain's long eighteenth century

Levy

2020

This survey synthesizes and examines existing scholarship on women's practices and positions within eighteenth‐century British book culture. Since feminist scholarship began in the 1980s, the recovery of women's literary history has been largely focused on recovering their written contributions in print. However, more recently, eighteenth centuryists have noticed the interconnections between oral, written and print cultures; engaged in bibliographical studies on the significance of the expansion of print and the book trades; and considered how rising literacy rates and diverse reading practices shaped culture. Women, as writers and readers, and as intermediaries in the production and circulation of culture, played a critical role in shaping these developments. This essay reviews the considerable scholarship that addresses women's various engagements with book culture, research that collectively has generated a more capacious understanding of the history of books in the long eighteenth century and the women who produced, shared and read them.

“…Betty Schellenberg's work on the ‘fluid continuum’ (64) between print and manuscript in the period invites further research into the mutual influence of manuscript and printed life writing. This would involve attending to the processes of revision, the migration of women's life writing texts from one to the other, the role of the editor and the effects of posthumous publication.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women's Life Writing in the Long 18th Century: A Critical Survey

Culley

2015

This essay provides an overview of developments in studies of British women's life writing in the long 18th century over the last 25 years and explores possible future directions at an exciting moment for the field. It addresses the expansion of the canon under the influence of feminist criticism and the shift in emphasis from autobiography to life writing as a hybrid and indeterminate form which works across disciplinary boundaries. It takes account of scholarly work on traditional categories of women's life writing, such as the scandalous memoir and spiritual autobiography, and considers more recent interests in biography, collective biography, afterlives and the letter. The article concludes with some reflections on potential avenues for future research, including a more rigorous approach to genre, the interrelations of manuscript and print and collaboration and collective authorship, as well as highlighting some of the challenges (and rewards) of working with life writing texts.