Content
Women's fiction from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was often described as sensational, scandalous, and second rate. Yet the fiction of writers such as Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood constituted some of the most popular writing of the period despite their subsequent exclusion from mainstream accounts of the history of the novel. This module seeks to introduce students to a representative range of women's fiction from this fifty-year period. We will also explore some of the critical issues at stake in 're-reading' popular women's writing from a feminist perspective and examine the way in which women novelists are now being incorporated into more general debates about the development of the novel in the eighteenth century.

1. Sexual Politics

Aphra Behn, "Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister", 1684-87, (Penguin)

2. Scandal Politics

Delarivier Manley, "The New Atlantis", 1709 (Penguin); "Queen Zarah", 1705"(Oxford Anthology)

3. Amatory Fiction

Eliza Haywood, "Love in Excess"; or, "The Fatal Enquiry", 1719-20 (Broadview Press)

4. Amatory Fiction continued

Jane Barker, "Love Intrigues", 1713; Eliza Haywood, "The British Recluse", 1724 and "Fantomina", 1725 (Oxford Anthology)

5. Reforming Amatory Fiction

Mary Davys, "The Reform'd Coquet", 1724; Penelope Aubin, "The Adventures of the Count de Vinevil", 1721; Elizabeth Singer
Rowe, "Friendship in Death", 1728 (Oxford Anthology)