Economic History, Economic Conditions, Economics, General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism, Writing, British History - General & Miscellaneous, Sex Role, English Literature

Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit

Name: Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit
Author: Catherine Ingrassia
ISBN: 9780521023016

by Catherine Ingrassia

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Overview

Speculative investment and the popular novel can be seen as analogous in the early eighteenth century in offering new forms of "paper credit"; and in both, women - who invested enthusiastically in financial schemes, and were significant producers and consumers of novels - played an essential role. Examining women's participation in the South Sea Bubble and the representations of investors and stockjobbers as "feminized," Catherine Ingrassia discusses the connection between the cultural resistance to speculative finance and hostility to the similarly "feminized" professional writers that Alexander Pope depicts in the Dunciad. Focusing on Eliza Haywood, and also on her male contemporaries Pope and Samuel Richardson, Ingrassia goes on to illustrate how new financial and fictional models were important for women's social, sexual, and economic interaction.