Companion volumes to the Library's major exhibition. Before Victoria, Paperback 0231136315$29.50 Before Victoria, Hardcover 0231136307$39.50 The lives of British women were transformed during the Romantic era of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the wake of the French Revolution, political equality and something like a sexual revolution for women seemed possible, and thanks in part to Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), the legal and social restrictions under which women lived were briefly but hotly contested. But by the time Victoria came to the throne in 1837, other changes had occurred, ones that inspired poetry, plays, and paintings as well as new ways of understanding feminine roles and sexuality. Combining literary and cultural history, this richly illustrated volume brings to life a remarkable though frequently overlooked group of women who transformed British culture during the Romantic era and inspired new ways of understanding feminine roles and female sexuality. Often working from home, women wrote novels and poetry, sculpted busts, painted portraits, and conducted scientific research. This book makes full use of The New York Public Library's extensive collections to depict these women, their works, and their social and domestic worlds, in a vividly illustrated companion volume to a major Library exhibition that tells the stories of a variety of fascinating women, putting them in the context of their extraordinary revolutionary moment. Fully illustrated throughout in color and black and white, 192 pages. back to Exhibition & Lecture Books | back to NYPL Publications | back to Books | Library Shop Home