Sederi 25
Sederi 25 — 2015
EDITORS
Berta Cano Echevarría & Ana Sáez-Hidalgo
REVIEW EDITOR
Francisco J. Borge López
ISSN 1135-7789
Begoña Lasa Álvarez, “Constructing a portrait of the early-modern woman writer for eighteenth-century female readers: George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752).” SEDERI 25 (2015): 105-127.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34136/sederi.2015.5 Download PDF
Abstract
George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752) is of special relevance to the study of early-modern women writers and their subsequent reception, since it contains details of the lives and writings of a considerable number of these women. This type of publication responded to the demand for educative works in general, and particularly to a growing female audience. Thus its chief goal was to provide readers with exemplary models of behaviour. Within the theoretical framework of women’s studies and literary biography, the biographies of these women writers are analysed in order to determine whether their lives and careers as writers were in keeping with the didactic purpose of such texts, and the extent to which the fact of being women shaped their biographical portraits.
Keywords: Early modern women writers; literary biography; women’s studies; education; eighteenth century; George Ballard.
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