Romantic Women’s Writing and Sexual Transgression

Suggests that women’s writing was a crucial part of the history of sexuality in the Romantic period

• Positions women’s writing as crucial to the history of sexuality in the long Romantic period
• Develops a new approach to the study of gender within Romanticism, by highlighting sexual transgression rather than obedience to cultural norms
• Develops bold new approaches to several now canonical authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, George Sand, and Emily Brontë
• Gives prominence to little known figures such as Mary Diana Dods and Elizabeth Moody
• Includes new work by emerging and leading scholars in the field

Women’s writing was a crucial part of the history of sexuality in the Romantic period, yet has not often been seen as part of that history. This collection shows how women writers fit into a tradition of Romanticism that recognizes transgressive sexuality as a defining feature. Building on recent research on the period’s sexual culture, it shows how women writers were theorizing perversions in their literary work and often leading transgressive sexual lives. In doing so, the collection also challenges current understandings of ‘transgression’ as a sexual category.