Convinced that the end of the world was at hand, many Romantic women writers assumed the role of the female prophet to sound the alarm before the final curtain fell. Orianne Smith argues that their prophecies were performative acts in which the prophet believed herself to be authorized by God to bring about social or religious transformation through her words. Utilizing a wealth of archival material across a wide range of historical documents, including sermons, prophecies, letters and diaries, Orianne Smith explores the work of prominent women writers – from Hester Piozzi to Ann Radcliffe, from Helen Maria Williams to Anna Barbauld and Mary Shelley – through the lens of their prophetic influence. As this book demonstrates, Romantic women writers not only thought in millenarian terms, but they did so in a way that significantly alters our current critical view of the relations between gender, genre, and literary authority in this period.
• Suggests that the impact of religion and prophecy on Romanticism was much larger than previously realised • Throws new light on the relationship between gender, genre and literary authority in the Romantic period • Draws new attention to a wide range of late eighteenth-century archival material on prophecy
Contents
Introduction: reading and writing the End of the World; 1. Verbal magic: an etymology of female enthusiasm; 2. The second coming of Hester Lynch Piozzi; 3. 'I, being the representative of liberty': Helen Maria Williams and the Utopian performative; 4. The passion of the Gothic heroine: Ann Radcliffe and the origins of narrative; 5. Anna Barbauld as Enlightenment prophet; 6. Prophesying tragedy: Mary Shelley and the end of Romanticism; Epilogue.
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