Matched pairs

"This study attempts to integrate women writers with their male counterparts, specifically by pairing individual novels by women with those by men and exploring multiple dimensions and implications of intertextuality across gender lines during the formative century of novel-writing in England.

Such a method results in describing, analyzing, and elevating early women novelists' achievements in different but no less crucial ways than purely feminocentric approaches have done, and in demonstrating how fiction by men was inspired, shaped, imitated, or criticized by women.".

"Close reading of the texts is complemented by broader historical and critical perspectives. Bartolomeo supports the case for cross-gender comparison by pointing to precedents in eighteenth-century critical discourse on the novel from both men and women.

The study concludes by relating differences among the dialogues to the "horizon of expectation" faced by novelists of different genders at different times, and by considering how the women novelists' engagement in various forms with male authors required a posture combining self-assertion and self-effacement."--BOOK JACKET.