Not Just Jane: Rediscovering Seven Amazing Women Writers Who Transformed British Literature

DeWees’s biographical assessment of seven English women authors of the 18th and 19th centuries marks an enthusiastic, if uneven, addition to the ongoing project of recovering “lost” women writers and addressing the gender imbalance in English literature. She profiles Charlotte Turner Smith, Helena Maria Williams, Mary Robinson, Catherine Crowe, Sara Coleridge (daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge), Dinah Mulcock Craik, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Their stories are complex, involving dissolute husbands, illness, opium, and the French Revolution. The best chapter belongs to Robinson, who had a lively career on the stage; gained the patronage of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire; and caught the eye of the Prince of Wales. DeWees can be almost too enthusiastic a tour guide, given to twee salutations to her “dear reader,” and her write-ups are light on substantive critique. Nonetheless, she does important work in challenging the notion of canon, pointing out that the advent of digital libraries has made many of these lesser-known works easily accessible. That accessibility, combined with the awareness spurred by books like DeWees’s, may be the best step of all toward redressing the literary canon’s historical imbalance. [em]Agent: Noah Ballard, Curtis Brown. (Oct.) [/em]