Kavanagh, Julia English Women of Letters and French Women of Letters

Definition

Julia Kavanagh’s companion volumes, English Women of Letters and French Women of Letters (1862), describe the lives and work of key women writers from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries in order to make visible the significant impact that women had on the development of the novel. In these collective biographies, Kavanagh coins the professional term “woman of letters” and reshapes literary criticism to privilege feminine qualities such as delicacy, tenderness, purity, sympathy, and access to affect. Kavanagh’s two-part work of criticism and women’s history provides a foundation for future feminist discourse.

Introduction

At the conclusion of English Women of Letters, Julia Kavanagh underscores her aim for this work and its companion volume, French Women of Letters: to make visible the important role that women played in the development of the novel. Though many of the women writers included in her “biographical sketches” had ceased to be widely read, Kavanagh wishes to...