This guide to women's writing in English aims to consolidate and epitomize the rereading of women's writing that has gone on in the past twenty-five years. There are entries on writers, on individual texts, and on general terms, genres and movements, all printed in a single alphabetical sequence. The earliest written documents in medieval English (the visionary writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe) are covered in an historical and geographical sweep that takes us up to the present. The entries reflect the spread of literacy, the history of colonization, and the development of postcolonial cultures using and changing the English language. The contributors are chosen from all the countries around the world--and represent academics, novelists, poets, critics, women and men. The result is a work of reference with a feel for the vitality, wealth and diversity of women's writing. Lorna Sage is Professor of English Literature at the University of East Anglia. She is also a literary journalist whose articles have appeared in such periodicals as the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and the New York Times Book Review