Sense and Sexuality: Women and Writing in the Eighteenth Century
Spring semester, 2016
Vacation Reading – Primary Texts
The following are some, but not all, the primary texts which we will study on this module. Students
are advised to start their reading of primary texts over the vacation, given the inevitable pressures
on time during term. We would especially advise you to have read the longer texts (Roxana; Evelina;
Sense and Sensibility; Emma Courtney) before term begins. Other, shorter texts, including
contextual reading, will be made available at a later date.
Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress by Daniel Defoe (Oxford World Classics, reiss. 2008)
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, or Fanny Hill, by John Cleland (Penguin Classics, 1985)
Evelina: or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, by Frances Burney
(Oxford World Classics, 2008)
Memoirs of Emma Courtney by Mary Hays (Oxford World Classics, reiss. 2009)
Mary, and The Wrongs of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft (Oxford World Classics, 2009)
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen (Oxford World Classics, 2008)
Note re. editions: Please use the editions mentioned above if at all possible – the annotations
and introductory material should be a big help to you in finding your way around these
texts. Cheaper editions lack this, and are often silently abridged too. Don’t forget you can
buy second-hand online (e.g. via Amazon) – and if you can get a few texts from the same
supplier, you’ll save on postage.
This has proved an enjoyable and rewarding module for students in the past – we hope you
will find it to be so too.