Lady Montague was the first female westerner to travel to Turkey. She left behind a set of correspondence which depicts a country very little known of Europeans at the time. Her letters, written during her travels to Europe, Asia and Africa were published in 1763 and inspired writers such as Chateaubriand and Lord Byron.
Playing with their readers' emotions, English literary women stage heroines and heroes in strange places: dungeons, cliffs, mysterious castles and austere moors. They did not lack imagination! This series presents these female authors, from the first gothic novels to the intense passions of the Victorian era.
Fanny Burney was amongst the first English women writers, and as such she not only contributed to the development of the novel towards the end of the 18th century but also to the invention of female figures entering into a hostile world, with a certain strength of character and sharing their experience with the reader.
Questioning the place of the individual in society during the industrial revolution, George Eliot painted the picture of rural communities and foreshadowed the naturalist novel, with its focus on underprivileged social classes and its fierce attachment to individual values