Other British Voices Women, Poetry, and Religion, 1766-1840 [Hardcover]

This volume discusses the lives and writings of five nonconformist women who comprised the heart of a vibrant literary circle in England between 1760 and 1840. Whelan shows these women's keen awareness and often radical viewpoints on contemporary issues connected to politics, religion, gender, and the Romantic sensibility.Preface 1. A Nonconformist Women's Literary Tradition 2. Mary Steele (1753-1813) and a West Country Tradition of Dissenting Women's Poetry 3. Mary Steele as the 'Rustic Maid' 4. Mary Scott (1751-1793) 5. Jane Attwater (1753-1843) 6. Elizabeth Coltman (1761-1838)

Timothy Whelan brings to this volume a formidable reputation as editor and interpreter of English female authors of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, having presided over the eight-volume edition of Nonconformist Women Writers, 17201840 & . we have cause to thank Professor Whelan for bringing to the attention of historians a wider range of primary sources, including many still in manuscript, for the religious nonconformity of this period than was previously available. (G. M. Ditchfield, The Journal of the Historical Association, October, 2016)

Timothy Whelan is Professor in the English Department at Georgia Southern University. Here is a case study in female literary tradition: the poems, letters, and other writings of a highly talented, multi-generational group of provincial, dissenting women friends. Such groups seldom leave enduring archives, and even feminist historians have often missed material lacking canonized names or links to dominant metropolitan, gentry, or Anglican culture. These women wrote, circulated their writing, and commented on each others' work without false modesty and with a confident sense of its value. They remain eminently readable. This study of their interconnections reshapes our understanding of ordinary pre-Victorian women's social and intellectual lives. Isobel Grundy, Professor Emeritus in the Department of English lS®