"These essays by internationally renowned feminist scholars rethink the methods and content of contemporary feminist literary history. Examining the legacy of both traditional literary history and second-wave history of women's writing, the essays collected in Women and Literary History: "For There She Was" challenge the standard form of reading women's writing in isolation from men's, and contest the project of recovering "lost" women writers." "The essays provide new research into women's literary history from the late seventeenth century to the Modernist period covering topics such as women's science and anti-slavery writing, midwifery, women and the novel, and lesbian literary history. Essays discuss the writing of Jane Sharp, Jane Barker, Anne Finch, Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Jacob, Phebe Lankester, Pauline Johnson, May Sinclair, Amy Levy, Edith Ellis, and Amy Wilson Carmichael."--BOOK JACKET.