Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750--1850

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This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century.

Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions.

Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of "classics," adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works.

In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies.

Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750--1850 Review

Devoney Looser's 2008 study, Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850, will prove to be a landmark publication. Looser provides an in-depth survey of the lives of a selection of women writers from the time period, from well-known authors like Jane Austen to those who have become obscure, like Jane Porter. Looser seeks to reposition our understanding of literary history by drawing attention to the work done by these women in their later years, arguing that the dismissal of late-in-life work has confused the conception of the canon and each of these women individually. To this end, Looser's favorite example is Virginia Woolf's famous remark, that Jane Austen should have laid a wreath at the grave of Fanny Burney. Burney, Looser notes, died after Austen--Austen could not help her implied ingratitude. Looser makes the undeniable point that, on the most fundamental level, our general understanding of the literary canon is convoluted by such misconceptions. Our reading and understanding of these women's works are limited and at times incorrect when we fail to consider their full lifetimes. These women have suffered critical neglect because of their gender, and their later work because of their age, which amounts to a double layer of discrimination Looser seeks to reject. In the case of Jane Austen, who certainly has not experienced any lack of attention, Looser's aim is to reconfigure our understanding of her life and work and demonstrate that even with such a well-known and celebrated author as Austen, there is a detrimental lack of consciousness concerning age.

Looser discusses novelists Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth; essayist Catharine Macaulay; novelist Jane Austen; biographer Hester Lynch Piozzi; critic and editor Anna Letitia Barbauld; and novelist Jane Porter. To do justice to their individual situations, Looser dedicates a chapter to each writer, with the exception of Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth, who share a combined chapter. Looser illuminates each woman's later life and work, as well as its critical reception, using a wealth of hitherto unexamined manuscript materials, then provides a brief gloss for biographical and social context. In each case, her writers encounter new sets of challenges in the literary marketplace as they age, demonstrating that these women were for the most part unprepared to face these new challenges even after visible and rewarding early careers.

Looser focuses most of her pages solely on women writers but thoughtfully includes several brief examples of contemporary male novelists to provide a counterpoint in each chapter. If the argument can made that by focusing almost solely on women she provides a weak and curtailed history, Looser counters reasonably that we are in a better position to understand women if we separate the cases to investigate this uncharted terrain fully.

To clarify, by someone of "old age" Looser means a person over the age of sixty, or in the case of "old maids," a single woman from thirty to forty and on. In this case, the inclusion of Jane Austen, who died at age forty-one, is fitting for the study. This distinction is crucial in understanding the combined impact of ageism and sexism: women could and were considered old well before their male counterparts, and their work was disregarded for it.

In each chapter, Looser provides adequate context, allowing the reader to follow her arguments without necessarily being familiar with a particular author or her work. She also illuminates the strategies each woman deployed upon entering old age, and how each of these failed. Her basic conclusions for each writer are similar, but never redundant, as the variety of authors she has chosen reflects the diverse methods women writers employed to escape the binding restrictions of being an older woman writer, and the impossibility of escaping this bind. Some, like Jane Porter, attempted to establish their literary legacy through royal support, but failed. Others, like Catharine Macaulay, tried to cultivate relationships with young male writers with the intent that they would write their biography and create a critical apparatus after their death; neither goal was realized.

Looser's immensely readable book is refreshing in the scholarly world of dense verbiage. It is a must read for anyone interested in this period of British literature, the novel, or women's writing. Looser has a penchant for succinct and effective summary, and also for a charming ability for a well-placed and amusing anecdote. Her illuminating introduction, which outlines her argument as well as provides helpful context for contemporary views on age, contains this gem:

"[A] peculiar advice manual from the mid-eighteenth century indicated that the surest way to live a long life was to found a college for young women. This was considered beneficial because breathing in the exhaled air of the young--especially virgins--was thought crucial to longevity." (11)

Her introduction and conclusion are of universal interest for those investigating women writers of any time period, but her chapters are so well contextualized and each author's life and work so aptly summarized that they become accessible and interesting for the general reader. For the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century scholar, Looser's work offers an innovative approach to reevaluate the canon through use of manuscript materials and a reconsideration of the ramifications of old age on the literary marketplace. I would recommend this sensible, enjoyable book highly both for its academic rigor and for its eye for amusing detail and its preoccupation with being a work one can read.

As wonderful and thorough as her book is, Looser fails to provide a complete picture of women writers. Though she includes novelists, essayists, editors, and critics in her study, Looser does not move beyond prose in her discussion and leaves out dramatists and poets, making few provisionary statements for either. This seems an important omission, and one that needs to be rectified.

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