Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. The subject of violence: Mary Lamb, femme fatale; 2. Violence against difference: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Robinson and women's strength; 3. 'The aristocracy of genius': Mary Robinson and Marie Antoinette; 4. Unnatural, unsexed, undead: Charlotte Dacre's gothic bodies; 5. 'In seraph strains, unpitying, to destroy': Anne Bannerman's femmes fatales; 6. 'Life has one vast stern likeness in its gloom': Letitia Landon's philosophy of decomposition; Bibliography; Index.

Promotional Information

Craciun demonstrates how portrayals of fatal women played an important role in the development of Romantic women's poetic identities.

About the Author

Adriana Craciun is Lecturer in English and Director of the Centre for Byron Studies at the University of Nottingham. She is the editor of Zofloya, or the Moor (1997) and A Routledge Literary Sourcebook for Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (2002), and co-editor of Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution (2001).

Reviews

'It is a strong, thoroughly-researched, ingenious study with many difference insights to offer, and the fact that it provokes as many questions as it answers is a mark of its scope that does not detract from its value.' Romanticism

'… groundbreaking study … an important and provocative book … always illuminating and intelligent and grounded in scholarly research … a significant scholarly achievement … Cracium offers a valuable argument that invites us to extend her readings to other writers and to reconsider how we read and teach Romanticism.' BARS Bulletin & Review

'Craciun's study is a timely and welcome remedy … her historically informed close readings are sharp, convincing, and persuasive, … Fatal Women of Romanticism is an important addition to the literature on Romantic-era women writers … her study has valuable pedagogical implications, especially for graduate-level classes.' Katherine Montwieler, Essays in Criticism

'Craciun's book does a good job of drawing together a variety of writings to illustrate her thesis … As more and more women writers are admitted to the 'canon', and as traditionally canonical male writers and traditional formulations of Romanticism are reviewed in light of this work, a book like Craciun's is timely and welcome … It is a strength of Craciun's book that she has taken the time to investigate this writing and formulate a useful and interesting theory about their significances … its breadth of coverage is impressive, and overall Fatal Women of Romanticism offers a useful corrective to a critical stance that strictly and rigidly allies behaviour with cultural constructions of propriety.' Jacqueline Labbe, University of Warwick