List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. The subject of violence: Mary Lamb, femme fatale; 2. Violence against difference: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Robinson and women's strength; 3. 'The aristocracy of genius': Mary Robinson and Marie Antoinette; 4. Unnatural, unsexed, undead: Charlotte Dacre's gothic bodies; 5. 'In seraph strains, unpitying, to destroy': Anne Bannerman's femmes fatales; 6. 'Life has one vast stern likeness in its gloom': Letitia Landon's philosophy of decomposition; Bibliography; Index.
Craciun demonstrates how portrayals of fatal women played an important role in the development of Romantic women's poetic identities.
Adriana Craciun is Lecturer in English and Director of the Centre for Byron Studies at the University of Nottingham. She is the editor of Zofloya, or the Moor (1997) and A Routledge Literary Sourcebook for Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (2002), and co-editor of Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution (2001).
'It is a strong, thoroughly-researched, ingenious study with many
difference insights to offer, and the fact that it provokes as many
questions as it answers is a mark of its scope that does not
detract from its value.' Romanticism
'… groundbreaking study … an important and provocative book …
always illuminating and intelligent and grounded in scholarly
research … a significant scholarly achievement … Cracium offers a
valuable argument that invites us to extend her readings to other
writers and to reconsider how we read and teach Romanticism.' BARS
Bulletin & Review
'Craciun's study is a timely and welcome remedy … her historically
informed close readings are sharp, convincing, and persuasive, …
Fatal Women of Romanticism is an important addition to the
literature on Romantic-era women writers … her study has valuable
pedagogical implications, especially for graduate-level classes.'
Katherine Montwieler, Essays in Criticism
'Craciun's book does a good job of drawing together a variety of
writings to illustrate her thesis … As more and more women writers
are admitted to the 'canon', and as traditionally canonical male
writers and traditional formulations of Romanticism are reviewed in
light of this work, a book like Craciun's is timely and welcome …
It is a strength of Craciun's book that she has taken the time to
investigate this writing and formulate a useful and interesting
theory about their significances … its breadth of coverage is
impressive, and overall Fatal Women of Romanticism offers a useful
corrective to a critical stance that strictly and rigidly allies
behaviour with cultural constructions of propriety.' Jacqueline
Labbe, University of Warwick
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