Prolific Ground: Landscape and British Women’s Writing, 1690-1790

Land ownership--and engagement with land more generally--constituted a crucial dimension of female independence in eighteenth-century Britain. Because political citizenship was restricted to male property owners, women could not wield political power in the way propertied men did. Given its foundational sociopolitical function, land necessarily generated copious writing that vested it with considerable aesthetic and economic value. This book, then, situates these issues in relation to the historical transformation of landscape under emergent capitalism. The women writers featured herein--including Jane Barker, Anne Finch, Sarah Scott, and Elizabeth Montagu--participated in this transformation by celebrating female estate stewardship and evaluating the estate stewardship of men. By asserting their authority in such matters, these writers acquired a degree of independence and self-determination that otherwise proved elusive.

Nicolle Jordan is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, where she has also served as director of women’s and gender studies.