Literary Foremothers: Women Writers in Dialogue with Tradition of Their Own

The textbook introduces works by Sappho, Christine de Pizan, Aphra Behn, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, George Sand, Caroline Norton, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Laura Marholm, Amalie Skram, Virginia Woolf and Amy Lowell. Some of these authors are presented as the role-models, the others as writers looking for their own female tradition and finding it in the writings of their literary foremothers. These responses - in form of poems, extracts from essays and novels - are included in the textbook and enriched with comments, interpretations and tasks for students. In the introduction, the question of female literary tradition is discussed by presenting various theoretical answers from distinguished feminist scholars.