X Marks the Spot ─ Women Writers Map the Empire for British Children, 1790-1895

Exploring a little noticed literary genre, Norcia (English, State U. of New York-Brockport) describes and samples the sizable imperial tradition in which women writers penned geographies that marshaled history, religion, economics, and anecdotal evidence to establish the social and cultural supremacy of England. Not welcome in scientific or academic realms, she says, the women wrote for children, simplifying complex notions. She discusses Mary Anna Venning and Barbara Hofland classifying human races in pre-Darwinian primers; hierarchies of consumption in the works of Favell Lee Mortimer, Sarah Lee, and Priscilla Wakefield; the gendering of geographic experience in the works of Mary H. C. Legh, Lucy Wilson, Mrs. E. Burrows, and Maria Hack; and resisting imperial geography in thirdspace. A conclusion ponders contextualizing archival recovery. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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