{"title":"Books by Elaine Showalter","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780349012285","title":"Between Friends","description":"The fascinating letters between Vera Brittain and Winifred Hotlby, written from 1920 to 1935, tell the story of an extraordinary friendship that created a model for a new kind of independent woman, after the First World War.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This is a literary relationship that began when the women met at Somerville, Cambridge and lasted until Winifred's early death at the age of 35. The letters that kept Vera Brittain and Winifred 'continuously together' shows us the inner life of two women who wished to make their mark on the world. They wrote about their ambitions and encouraged and advised each other. But there were also periods when they were literary rivals (Winifred landed a book deal first) and the letters show them negotiating envy and self-doubt. It was at times an uneven relationship: Vera, five years older, married and had two children during this period, and her Testament of Youth became a bestseller, while Winifred remained a single woman with an adventurous spirit that took her travelling and as one of Holtby's characters says in her famous novel, South Riding: 'I am spinster and I am going to spin!' Vera helped Winifred form her ideology - 'You made me' and Winifred shored up Vera, including managing her husband and children (who were devoted to Winifred) and was Vera's intellectual sounding board.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A social history, a portrait of a time between the wars and a dramatic, touching story, it has all the hallmarks of honest female friendship: one not without friction and with its own delicate co-dependency but it was life enhancing and life changing for them both. After Winifred's death Vera said of their letters that they showed 'that loyalty and affection between women - not only unsung but mocked, belittled - is a noble relationship.'","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201699152050,"sku":"9780349012285","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349012285_882bc6de-21fb-4926-9417-d3fca630ccb2.jpg?v=1786014214"},{"product_id":"9780860688693","title":"The Female Malady","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this informative, timely and often harrowing study, Elaine Showalter demonstrates how cultural ideas about 'proper' feminine behaviour have shaped the definition and treatment of female insanity for 150 years, and given mental disorder in women specifically sexual connotations. Along with vivid portraits of the men who dominated psychiatry, and descriptions of the therapeutic practices that were used to bring women 'to their senses', she draws on diaries and narratives by inmates, and fiction from Mary Wollstonecraft to Doris Lessing, to supply a cultural perspective usually missing from studies of mental illness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHighly original and beautifully written, The Female Malady is a vital counter-interpretation of madness in women, showing how it is a consequence of, rather than a deviation from, the traditional female role.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43204181295282,"sku":"9780860688693","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780860688693_3db11c36-f858-4df3-be42-166d7f3c7cde.jpg?v=1786016051"},{"product_id":"9781844084968","title":"A Literature Of Their Own","description":"When first published in 1982, A LITERATURE OF THEIR OWN quickly set the stage for the creative explosion of feminist literary studies that transformed the field in the 1980s. Launching a major new area for  literary investigation, the book uncovered the long but neglected tradition of women writers and the development of their fiction from the 1800s onwards. It includes assessments of famous writers such as the Brontës, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Drabble and Doris Lessing, but also presents critical appraisals of Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton and Sarah Grand - to name but a few of those prolific and successful Victorian novelists - once household names, now largely forgotten. This edition, revised and expanded in 1997, contains an introductory chapter surveying the book's reception as well as a postscript chapter celebrating the legacy of feminism and feminist criticism in the efflorescence of contemporary British fiction by women.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307703939445,"sku":"9781844084968","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781844084968_dc3f8ef4-98f6-4371-b46d-ae461fd5d6a7.jpg?v=1786028519"},{"product_id":"9781853815904","title":"Daughters Of Decadence","description":"At the turn of the century, short stories by- and often about- 'New Women' flooded the pages of English and American magazines like The Yellow Book, The Savoy, Atlantic Monthly and Harpers. This daring new fiction, often innovative in form, and courageous in its candid literary aspiration, shocked Victorian critics who parodied the experimental stories in Punch as symptoms of fin de siecle decadence, or denounced the authors as 'literary degenerates' or 'erotomaniacs.' This collection brings together twenty of the most original and important stories, including such little-known writers as Victoria Cross, George Egerton, Vernon Lee, Constance Fenimore Wollson and Charlotte Mew. Ranging from the lyrical to the Gothic, and frequently dealing with the conflicts of women artists, the short fiction of the fin de siecle is the missing link between the Golden Age of Victorianism women writers and the new era of feminist modernism.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308057670005,"sku":"9781853815904","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781853815904_f593d6e2-bbde-4171-86b5-2a4c15392bb1.jpg?v=1786029505"},{"product_id":"teaching-literature","title":"Teaching Literature","description":"Teaching Literature is an inspirational guidebook for all teachers of English and American literature in higher education.    Written by leading academic, prolific author and cultural journalist, Elaine ShowalterOriginal and provocative reflections on teaching literature in higher educationEncourages teachers to make their classroom practice intellectually excitingWide-ranging - covers the practical, theoretical, and methodological aspects of teaching literatureHighly practical - employs real examples from real classes and careers throughoutDraws on 40 years of international teaching experience","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481669476725,"sku":"9780631226246","price":27.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780631226246.jpg?v=1786089955"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-elaine-showalter.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}