Judy Simons

Austen: Persuasion

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park and Persuasion are notoriously problematic works which have stimulated diverse and often polarised critical readings. This collection illustrates these oppositions and recreates the current lively debate about the novels' interpretation. Examining the texts in the light of key developments in cultural, historicist and feminist theory, the volume both provides a view of Austen as a traditionalist and simultaneously argues for Mansfield Park and Persuasion as radical works which address contemporary politics of culture and of gender in exciting collocations.

Mansfield Park and Persuasion

Kate Fullbrook

This study examines the problems that women writers encounter as they attempt to write themselves into a culture, that in critical and commercial terms, has traditionally been dominated by men.

A Woman's Business : Women, Writing and the Marketplace

Writing

Shirley Foster

What Katy Read focuses on a much neglected area of literary criticism: literature for girls. Written by women for children, such texts have been doubly marginalized by the critical establishment. Shirley Foster and Judy Simons use twentieth-century feminist critical practice to open up fresh perspectives on popular fiction for girls written between 1850 and 1920. The study analyses both American and British novels for girls which have acquired 'classic' status, from the domestic myth to the school story, and considers their scope and influence in providing role models for girl readers.

Feminist Re-Readings of ‘Classic’ Stories for Girls

What Katy Read

Through close readings of these eight North American and British novels, which have had a powerful impact on the development of literature for girls, Foster and Simons consider genres from the domestic myth to the school story, analyze the transgressive figure of the tomboy, and discuss ways in which superficially conventional texts implicitly undermine patterns of patriarchy.

Feminist Re-readings of "classic" Stories for Girls

Mansfield Park and Persuasion are both notoriously problematic works that have stimulated diverse and often polarised critical readings. These essays interpret and outline the debate in the light of cultural, historicist and feminist theory.

Judy Simons

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