Sense and Sexuality: Women and Writing in the Eighteenth Century,
Spring semester, 2015
Vacation Reading – Primary Texts
The following are some, but not all, the primary texts which we will likely 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. I 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.
Fantomina by Eliza Haywood (Broadview Press, 2004)
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)
Mary, and The Wrongs of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft (Oxford World Classics,
2009)
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen (Oxford World Classics, 2008)
Memoirs of Mary Robinson ‘Perdita’, Mary Robinson (reprints available, eg Dodo press)
Memoirs of Emma Courtney by Mary Hays (Oxford World Classics, reiss. 2009)
Note re. editions: Please use good academic editions (e.g. Oxford World’s Classics,
Penguin) where possible – I know they are more expensive but 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 – I hope you will find it to be so too.