Bücher der Reihe Chawton House Library: Women's Novels

The Victim of Fancy was first published in December 1787 and, despite favourable reviews, has not been published since. Cook's new scholarly edition of this forgotten novel will be of paramount importance in allowing new insights into the form of the sentimental novel as it actually existed in the 1780s, and not as it is often perceived.

Published in 1763, The History of Lady Julia Mandeville was Frances Brooke's first and most successful novel. This modern critical edition contains an introductory essay on the text, endnotes and textual variants as well as appendices containing contemporary reviews and some of Brooke's other writing.

Some of the theories Genlis adopts in the education of the eponymous children have their roots in Rousseau's "Emile". However, Genlis herself suggested that Rousseau knew little of the practical education of children. This work is placed within the context of the late eighteenth-century debate on female education.

This modern critical edition contributes both to our knowledge of 18th Century radical writers and thinkers, and to our understanding of the trajectory of women¿s fiction and the Jacobin novel.

Self-Control (1811) was a literary sensation, going into four editions in its first year. The first novelist to set her story against a strong Scottish background, Brunton set the scene for other writers such as Walter Scott. Jane Austen was also a fan, she read it at least twice, worrying that the work might foreshadow her own creations.

Eliza Haywood was one of the most popular and versatile writers of the eighteenth century. The two novellas in this edition - The Rash Resolve (1724) and Life's Progress (1748) - show her developing and adapting her ideas on the subject of passion and romance. Though superficially presented as cautionary tales, Haywood introduces a feminist slant.

This edition connects four female writers from two different countries, presenting the English translations of two of the most popular eighteenth-century French novels and a sequel to one of them.

Interest in the work of Eliza Haywood has increased greatly over the last two decades. Though much scholarship is focused on her 'scandalous' early career, this critical edition of The Invisible Spy (1755) adds to the canon of her later, more sophisticated work.

Often linked to the works of early Romanticism, Sophie Cottin's Malvina (1803) was a bestselling sentimental novel. First published in France, the English translation by Elizabeth Gunning - a prolific novelist in her own right - allowed Cottin's book to achieve success internationally. This is the first modern scholarly edition of Malvina.