The printing press was invented in 1450 but it took nearly 300 years before the idea of ‘fiction’ (rather than lying) was accepted. And then it was women who took over the form and made it their own. Not that these women – who were denied education – were acknowledged by the male literary establishment. Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the first to be hugely successful: she had more than 70 publications to her name and many of them were concerned with women’s rights to sexual freedom. One of her novels - Oroonoko (1759) was based on her trip to the West Indies, and is accepted as the first novel that was about the abolition of slavery! Delarivière Manly (1663-1724) was the mistress of the scandalous political novel who made much use of ‘carelessly dropped letters’ in her numerous publications. Eliza Haywood (1693 -1756) a prolific writer and best seller (more than 60 publications) - introduced the first non-aristocratic heroine in English literature in the form of Miss Betsy Thoughtless: Betsy not only discussed the issue of pregnancy termination with her female friends, but posed the moral question of whether a wife was entitled to leave her husband - if he was boring. The answer was yes! Fanny Burney 1752-1840 was the bestselling author for decades (Evelina) and Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) wrote more than 10 novels where the heroine was a mature woman with a rotter of a husband! Nothing like it ever before! This was the tradition –along with 195 other wonderful women writers -that Jane Austen inherited. It was one where the only education that women could access outside their own experiences, was through the writing of these daring and inspirational authors. No wonder Jane Austen’s books were self help guides for finding the right husband! dale spender spent two years in the London Library removing every work of fiction from the shelves to find these forgotten women. It was an eye-opening experience to know that with such limited resources, women had achieved so much – and gained so much enjoyment from their creativity. It’s all here in this readable and often ‘racy’ book – where each of the 200 MOTHERS OF THE NOVEL and their works are listed. The inner lives and struggles of women are revealed – at a time when they had no other options than to become wives. It’s women’s version of women’s history.

Jane Austen's letters afford a unique insight into the daily life of the intimate and gossipy, observant and informative--they read much like the novels themselves. They bring alive her family and friends, her surroundings and contemporary events with a freshness unparalleled in modern biographies. Above all we recognize the unmistakable voice of the author of such novels as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility . We see the shift in her writing from witty and amusing descriptions of the social life of town and country, to a thoughtful and constructive tone while writing about the business of literary composition. R.W. Chapman's ground-breaking edition of the collected Letters first appeared in 1932, and a second edition followed twenty years later. Now in this third edition of Jane Austen's Letters , Deirdre Le Faye has added new material that has come to light since 1952, and re-ordered the letters into their correct chronological sequence. She has provided discreet and full annotation to each letter, including its provenance, and information on the watermarks, postmarks, and other physical details of the manuscripts, together with new biographical, topographical, and general indexes. Teachers, students, and fans of Jane Austen, at all levels, will find remarkable insight into one of the most popular novelists ever.

From the author of the international bestseller Life of Pi, a brilliant retelling of the Trojan War from two commoners: an ancient soldier and a modern scholar. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not the only ancient tales of the Trojan War. In Son of Nobody, Yann Martel composes a new the Psoad, an epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight at Troy. Psoas meets his doom and the poem of his life is lost—until a Canadian academic studying at Oxford, Harlow Donne, discovers its relics thirty centuries later. As Harlow assembles and comments on the fragments in footnotes, he retrieves memories of his wife and daughter and grapples with questions of ambition, family, and responsibility in both the ancient and modern worlds. Son of Nobody upends the regal perspective of traditional epics and shows that “the past is never done with, that always there are parallels and returns and repetitions, always the song continues.” Readers of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Emily Wilson’s The Iliad will revel in this breathtaking feat of the imagination.

From Rachel Kushner, a Booker Prize finalist, two-time National Book Award finalist, and “one of the most gifted authors of her generation” (The New York Times Book Review), comes a new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner of glittering insights and dark humor.Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more. In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story. Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of “noir” is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner’s finest achievement yet as a novelist, a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.