Introduction: Feminisms and Futures: Women’s Writing 1660–1830

Abstract

Although this collection of essays is inspired by Chawton House Library’s tenth anniversary conference, this book is not a conference proceedings. Indeed, and rather fittingly, the essays that follow emerged, like the field that is their subject, on the periphery of the main stage (which, in this case, was a marquee on the south lawn at Chawton House Library). They originated in chats in corridors and over coffee, which were followed up by conversations in other locations, at other conferences, by email and by telephone. The resulting contributions to this collection reflect on the simultaneously exciting yet disquieting feeling many of us shared in our recognition that the conversation we could and were having about eighteenth-century women’s writing in 2013 was very different from that orchestrated by its precursor event to mark Chawton House Library’s opening in 2003.