Compelling and interesting... Like a latter-day Isaac D'Israeli, Looser explores many byways of 18th- and early-19th century authorship and publication. Accordingly, specialists in those periods will find here a trove of useful, thought-provoking historical anecdote.
Choice
So meticulously researched and her prose so pleasantly lucid and unassuming... Looser crafts a convincing argument for the reexamination of women writers ... Read morelike Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Porter, and Anna Letitia Barbauld, paying closer attention to their later lives and works.
Jeanine M. Casler
Papers on Language and Literature
Engaging and clearly written, Looser's book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of what it meant to be an elderly female writer in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries while also identifying important considerations of fact and methodology often overlooked without the perspective of age studies.
Kay Heath
Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies
The book's lively introduction offers plenty of promise. Looser conveys considerable enthusiasm about her subject and the impressive archival research she conducted for Women Writers and Old Age. Throughout the six chapters, Looser maintains a lucid and engaging style that many contemporary scholars might well emulate.
Marilyn Roberts
Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer
Devoney Looser is one of the best at bringing together biographical evidence, sophisticated theory, and literary sensibility.
Paula R. Backscheider
Studies in English Literature
Devoney Looser has written an extremely important book that sensitively explores ageism and the literary marketplace just when the Mothers of the Novel were writing their final chapters.
Laurie Kaplan
JASNA News
Elegant and original study... Looser not only offers a fresh perspective on individual reputations but raises intriguing questions about the procession of 'generations' in literary history.
Elizabeth Eger
Times Literary Supplement
One of the strengths of Women Writers and Old Age is Looser's uncompromising willingness to acknowledge how difficult it was for older women writers to triumph over the cultural forces ranged against them.
Roxanne Eberle
Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas
This is a thought-provoking... contribution not only to old age and gender studies but also to the literary history of the long 18th century.
Anne-Julia Zwierlein
Zeitschrift fuer Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Wide-ranging and scrupulous book explores a neglected and fascinating subject.
Caroline Gonda
Eighteenth-Century Fiction
Although Looser's assumptions may not be shared by every reader, the book is so well informed and ends with such a vast bibliography that everyone stands to learn by it.
Marialuisa Bignami
Modern Language Review
Women Writers in Old Age, 1750-1850, provides a valuable contribution to the nascent field of study.
Patricia Murphy
Nineteenth-Century Literature
With Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850... Devoney Looser is one of the best at bringing together biographical evidence, sophisticated theory, and literary sensibility.
Paula R. Backscheider
Studies in English Literature
A groundbreaking study of the late careers of women writers.
Year's Work in English Studies
A well-written, imaginative, carefully researched, and fascinating study.
Lisa Vargo
Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature
A pioneering effort in what will undoubtedly prove to be another useful perspective from which to consider literary history.
Susan Staves
Studies in Romanticism
Groundbreaking in a variety of ways... This work is well written, thoroughly (and pretty amazingly) researched, and presents a convincing critical argument not only for its subject, but also for the continuation of studies about the subject.
Kit Kincade
Eighteenth Century: Current Bibliography
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