Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley
Pioneers in life writing, Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein (1818 ), are now widely regarded as two of the leading writers of the Romantic period. They are both responsible for opening up new possibilities for women in genres traditionally dominated by men.
This vo …
Repossessing the World
Why does it seem as if everyone is writing memoirs, and particularly women?
The current popularity of memoir verifies the common belief that we each have a story to tell. And we do...especially women. Memoirs are not only representations of women’s personal lives but also of their desire to repossess important parts of our culture, in which wom …
Undelivered Letters to Hudson's Bay Company Men on the Northwest Coast of America, 1830-57
In the early nineteenth century, when the Hudson's Bay Company sentmen to its furthest posts along the coast of North America'sPacific Northwest, the letters of those who cared for those menfollowed them in the Company's supply ships. Sometimes, theseletters missed their objects the men had returned to Britain, ordeserted their ships, or died. T …
Working in Women’s Archives
What comes to mind when we hear that a friend or colleague is studying unpublished documents in a celebrated author’s archive? We might assume that they are reading factual documents or, at the very least, straightforward accounts of the truth about someone or some event. But are they?
Working in Women’s Archives is a collection of essays tha …
