Focusing on the period from 1770 to 1830, this collection uses recent thinking on women in the Romantic period, in both Western Europe and North America, to define an agenda which will shape studies in this area into the next century. Investigating issues of class and gender, imperialism and gender identity, and gender and genre, the essays range widely over women and women's affairs during the period, and include pieces on such important writers as Emily Dickinson, Letitia Landon, and Anna Letitia Barbauld. As a whole, the volume raises questions about gendered Romanticism in America, about the surge of Romantic poetics in mid-century, and about the appropriation of gendered Romanticism by fin-de-siecle writers.