Womens Economic Thought in the Romantic Age

This book examines the writings of seven English women economists from the period 1735-1811. It reveals that contrary to what standard accounts of the history of economic thought suggest, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women intellectuals were undertaking incisive and gender-sensitive analyses of the economy.

"In this stimulating study, Rostek adopts the radical premise that women writing about money across a range of genres should be classified as economists. She argues that while the emerging discipline of economics was marginalising the experiences of women as economic subjects, a great flourishing of alternative proto-feminist knowledge formation was taking place elsewhere, in the pages of novels, pamphlets and memoirs. Rostek's incisive readings allow us to appreciate the intellectual daring of relatively unknown writers such as Sarah Chapone, Priscilla Wakefield and Mary Ann Radcliffe while seeing even the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen anew." Professor E.J. Clery, English Literature, Uppsala University "In this brilliant book, Joanna Rostek not only recovers a fascinating history of women writers as economic thinkers, but also challenges our very understanding of what constitutes 'the economy' and its study. A landmark contribution to both literary history and the history of economic thought." Dr Paul Crosthwaite, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Edinburgh

Autorentext

Joanna Rostek is Junior Professor of Anglophone Literary, Cultural, and Media Studies at the University of Giessen, Germany. She was a visiting scholar at institutions in Scotland, Poland, and the US and is co-founder of the research network Methodologies of Economic Criticism. She has published extensively on women's writing and on the relationship between literature, culture, and the economy.

Inhalt

1. Introduction Part I: A Transdisciplinary Methodology for a Herstory of Economic Thought 2. Women and Scholarship, or: The Cultural Forms of Knowledge Formation 3. Women and Economics, or: The Outside(r)s of Economic Discourse 4. Women and Writing, or: The Gendered Legacy of Genre Interlude: Gender, Genres, and Knowledge Formation Today Part II: Women's Economic Thought in the Romantic Age 5. Feminist Economics of Marriage 6. Women and Paid Work 7. Moral Economics 8. Conclusion: The Patriarchal Economy Works Cited