Abstract
Jane West's late life and writings show a self-consciousness about authorship and a strong perspective on literary value and fame in old age. This essay shows how such a consciousness is revealed in a private letter, her last novel, Ringrove (1827), and her detail-filled will. West's late-life self-conception in a private letter as an 'old Q in the corner' deserves to be examined as a metaphor for the ageing female author. Taken together, these three texts demonstrate how West tries to shape readers' responses to old women as writers, using self-deprecating humour as a response to perceived neglect. The results are hardly comic, but they give us the opportunity to examine how a self-consciously older woman puts her words before a mass readership that was not necessarily well disposed to receive them.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 281-290 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Romanticism |
Volume | 25 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2019 |
Keywords
- Ageing
- History
- Jane West
- Literary gerontology
- Literature
- Novel
- Old age
- Women writers
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Literature and Literary Theory