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Examines the full spectrum of women's participation in the social, economic, religious, and poetic debates surrounding the French Revolution.

This pathbreaking collection engages in the important new work of rediscovering the hundreds of British women writing during the Romantic period, women who we now realize were central, not marginal, to the poetics and ideologies of Romanticism. Yet no previous volume has focused on British women's responses to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, or on their participation in the social, economic, religious, and poetic debates surrounding these political conflicts. As the first book to represent the full spectrum of women's participation in the Revolutionary debates, Rebellious Hearts uncovers a rich new field of literary and historical scholarship.

“Rebellious Hearts is a lively, engaging, and cross-disciplinary survey of British women's writings on the French Revolution. Its essays are conspicuously open-minded and historically informed, and commendably tackle little-known figures, as well as the likes of Hannah More and Frances Burney.” — Linda Colley, author of Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837

“The authors of these essays have done a fine job of working with important primary sources and the most recent secondary ones. Moreover, they have done so in a remarkably savvy way, cognizant at every step of the real, actual nature of daily life in Romantic England and of the manner in which women writers used their publications in a variety of ways to engage, comment upon, shape, and otherwise manipulate public opinion.” — Stephen C. Behrendt, author of Royal Mourning and Regency Culture: Elegies and Memorials of Princess Charlotte

“Rebellious Hearts derives much of its impact from its presentation of a substantial number of women writers whose published works reflect both common concerns and authorial strategies (such as a strong epistolary trend in diverse genres) and a striking range of political opinion. I was persuaded that in ignoring this rich network of conversations, we have had a seriously diminished understanding of England's debates on the French Revolution. ” — Sarah M. Zimmerman, author of Romanticism, Lyricism, and History

Contributors include Kevin Binfield, Adriana Craciun, Madelyn Gutwirth, Terence Hoagwood, Maria Jerinic, Angela Keane, Deborah Kennedy, Kari Lokke, Judith Miller, Jeanne Moskal, Ann Frank Wake, Miriam Wallace, and Jan Wellington.