Tracing the increase of behavior literature and the didactic novel over the process the eighteenth century, this ebook explores how British ladies used the didactic novel style to have interaction in political debate in the course of and instantly after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. even if didactic novels have been usually traditional in constitution, they supplied a venue for girls to uphold, to undermine, to interrogate, yet most significantly, to write down approximately applicable social codes and values. The essays talk about the multifaceted ways that didacticism and women’s writing have been attached and show the reforming power of this female and ostensibly constricting style. targeting works by means of novelists from Jane West to Susan Ferrier, the gathering argues that didactic novels inside of those many years have been really female; that they have been one of the few applicable methods wherein ladies may perhaps perform public political debate; and they frequently blurred political and ideological limitations. the 1st half addresses either conservative and radical texts of the 1790s to teach their shared concentrate on institutional reform and indebtedness to Mary Wollstonecraft, regardless of their huge ideological diversity. within the moment half, the tips of Hannah extra effect the methods authors after the French revolution frequently associated the didactic with household development and nationwide team spirit. The essays reveal the potential during which the didactic style works as a corrective not only on a private and person point, yet on the political point via its specialise in matters resembling inheritance, slavery, the jobs of ladies and youngsters, the bounds of the radical, and English and Scottish nationalism. This publication bargains a accomplished and wide-ranging photo of the way ladies with a number of ideological and academic foundations have been eager about British political discourse in the course of a time of radical partisanship and social change.