The Foreign Woman in British Literature: Exotics, Aliens, and Outsiders

While England has been strengthened by a proud isolationism, she has simultaneously been enriched by the economic, social, and political complexities that have emerged as people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds have moved within her borders, or when her own citizens have emigrated among those foreigners to live or rule. This book explores the foreign element in English culture and the attempt by English writers from the early 19th to the mid 20th century to portray their complex and often ambiguous responses to that doubly foreign element among them: the foreign woman. While being foreign may begin with national or ethnic difference, the contributors to this book expand it to include other forms of alienation from a dominant culture, resulting from gender, race, class, ideology, or temperament.

MARILYN DEMAREST BUTTON is Associate Professor of English at Lincoln University. She has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and reference works.

TONI REED is a grant development consultant and freelance writer. Her previous books includeDemon-Lovers and Their Victims in British Fiction (1988).