Through the Fiction of Phebe Gibbes places this prolific, newly recovered English writer at the centre of the revolutionary period. Gibbes's novels mark the struggles of women for agency in an expanding British empire, from the Seven Years' War to revolutions in American, Haiti and France. With Gibbes as a nexus in a lineage of women writers from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen, Kathryn S. Freeman offers a valuable perspective on the 'long eighteenth century', with Gibbes' own evolution mirroring that of the larger period. The study traces the development of Gibbes' authorial voice from satire to irony through a range of female characters subverting patriarchal oppression. Freeman guides the reader through patterns of narrative voice, concerns with gender and sexuality, and elements of wordplay through detailed discussion of five novels representing Gibbes' evolving representation of a subversive female subjectivity.
By:
Kathryn Freeman
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 16mm
Weight: 527g
ISBN: 9781526175007
ISBN 10: 1526175002
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 02 July 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Introduction 1 The Life and Adventures of Mr. Francis Clive (1764): “A marriage, where love is wanting, is only a legal prostitution.” 2 The American Fugitive: or, Friendship in a Nunnery (1778, 1784): Transnationalism between the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution 3 Transnationalism in the Anglo-Indian Novels: Zoriada, or, Village Annals (1786) and Hartly House, Calcutta: A Novel of the Days of Warren Hastings (1789) 4 Elfrida; or Paternal Ambition (1786): “…fled from Arcadia, she could not fly from the apprehended disease” Conclusion: Affect, Globalism, and Modernity from the French and Indian War to Waterloo Bibliography Index -- .
Kathryn S. Freeman is Professor of English at the University of Miami.
