Feminist pioneers, feminist classics: Reflections on age and generation in scholarship on romantic-era women's writings

This essay, conceived as a response to Anne Mellor's Romanticism and Gender (1993), considers the author's Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain 1750-1850 (2008) in the context of contemporary scholarship on Romantic-era women's writings. First, the author assesses her own work in relation to generations of feminism and feminists, arguing for the importance of adding investigations of age to our collective work. Next, she compares the reviews of her and Mellor's books to illustrate the ongoing benefits and pitfalls of publishing on Romantic-era women's writing.