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Warned not to write - and certainly not to bite - these women put pen to paper anyway and wrote themselves into history.
From the fourteenth century through to the present day, women who write have been understood as mad, undisciplined or dangerous. Female writers have always had to find ways to overcome or challenge these beliefs. Some were cautious and discreet, some didn't give a damn, but all lived complex, eventful and often controversial lives.
Eve Bites Back places the female contemporaries of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton centre stage in the history of literature in English, uncovering stories of dangerous liaisons and daring adventures. From Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Aemilia Lanyer and Anne Bradstreet, to Aphra Behn, Mary Wortley Montagu, Jane Austen and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, these are the women who dared to write.
Author: Anna Beer
Paperback Published 3 January 2024 304 pages
Originally published in hardcover 8 November 2022
'Essential reading.' -- Claire Tomalin
'A smart, funny and highly readable journey through the lives of women writers and the challenges they and their works face. It's an informative, enthusiastic and rightly enraging tour de force.' -- A.L. Kennedy
'Eve Bites Back isn't pleading for justice for female writers, it's indicting a system that has long ignored them and, to some extent, still does... Part polemic, part revisionist criticism, Eve Bites Back, as its title suggests, is sharp and aggressive, a book that will irritate, enlighten, persuade and provoke argument. It's a work of correction, in every sense of the word.' -- The Washington Post