If anyone cares

An impressive list!

Those marked with an asterisk are re-reads. I’ve read them before.

But have you already read them?  (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

That is impressive. One point, Fantomina isn’t by Behn but another female writer of the day, Eliza Haywood, memorably dismissed by Swift as one of those ‘stupid, scribbling women’ and wickedly satirized by Pope in the second book of The Dunciad as the prize in the pissing contest.

See in the circle next, Eliza placed,
Two babes of love close clinging to her waist;
Fair as before her works she stands confess’d,
In flowers and pearls by bounteous Kirkall dress’d.
The goddess then: ‘Who best can send on high
The salient spout, far-streaming to the sky;
His be yon Juno of majestic size,
With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes.
This China Jordan let the chief o’ercome
Replenish, not ingloriously, at home.’

You needed a thick skin to be a woman writer in those days!

Or, indeed, a writer of any kind.

languagehat - 02 January 2013 11:53 AM

Or, indeed, a writer of any kind.

Bit like this modern internet, innit? I expect they had their literary circle bullies then as well…

Thanks. Corrected.