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The International Circulation of Women’s Writings




The International Circulation of Women’s Writings:
the Case of Stéphanie de Genlis as Received in Several European Countries

Organizers / Chairs: Suzan van Dijk and Francesca Scott

  • Francesca Scott and Suzan van Dijk:
  • Brief introduction presenting the Digital Tool and an Interesting

Case (Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis).

The WomenWriters database was used during the last decade as the common framework in which researchers from over 20 countries stored data concerning the production and reception of publications by women authors. Developed now, thanks to CLARIN-NL funding, into a Virtual Research Environment, there will be more opportunities for studying on a large-scale the role of female authorship and also the presence in the whole Europe of a number of interesting women.
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis is one of those. A brief insight is given in one of her novels : La Duchesse de La Vallière (1804) incorporates an interesting narrative topos, potentially “female” by the way in which it is handled: a concealed pregnancy followed by an explicit childbirth scene – possibly a kind of "punishment" for the woman’s transgression. It is obviously a challenge for translators.


In 2002, the year before the opening of Chawton House Library, as a research collection and centre for research in women’s writing of the long eighteenth century, a call for papers was sent out from the University of Southampton and Chawton House Library inviting proposals for an international conference to be held in July 2003. The resulting presentations focused on the rich field for the study of women writers and their careers, celebrating the range of women whose writing was seen as key to, as the original call for papers put it, ‘the early shaping of our tangled modernity’. For three days, distinguished colleagues and scholars reflected on and debated the state of the field.

Ten years on, in July 2013, Chawton House Library will celebrate the anniversary of its opening. With the University of Southampton, and the University of Kent, we invite colleagues to reflect on all aspects of the writing of women of the long eighteenth century. We are particularly interested in papers that celebrate the achievements of the last decade since the opening conference in 2003, as well as papers that map new directions, and reflect upon the work still to be done in the writing of women’s literary history.


In this conference there will be a COST-WWIH panel, entitled:

The Transnational Reception of Women Writers (Friday 5 July, 9.30)




There will also be other COST-WWIH members participating in this conference:

  • Gillian Dow:
    • chairing session 9d: Women Translators and Translated Women


SvD, July 2015




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