In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

332 HEATHER MURRAY understand better the ethical bases on which our society rests, she believes, the world we live in becomes a better place. For some, Systems of Survival may give pleasure less in the arrival than in the journey. Others may regard Jacobs as a utopian dreamer. But so then was Plato. In The Republic he places his ideal city 'in the sky.' It is unlikely that Systems of Survival will bring about any large-scale revaluation of society. But who can say? Let the book stretch the minds of those readers who wish them stretched. That may be achievement enough. Many thinkers gradually narrow their focus; JaneJacobs has gradually expanded hers. Canny, unsentimental, self-ironic, usuallyunconventional, iconoclastic ifneed be, she has for over thirty years contributed a distinctive vision to the intellectual life of our times. Systems of Survival, her most surprising book and her longestmeditated , has also been her least-discussed. That is surprising in itself. In time, people may regard it as a worthy successor to the studies that preceded it, even as the inevitable and culminating work in an oeuvre that debuted so spectacularly with TIle Death and Life of Great American Cities. That book began with a quotation by Oliver Wendell Holmes to the effect that 'the chief worth of civilization is just that it makes the means of living more complex.' Fortunately we have Jane Jacobs to help us understand the complexity. Holmes's words stand guard over all her work. In Systems ofSurvival, as in The Death and Life ofGreat American Cities and the other books, Jacobs's moral passion to elucidate society shines as brightly as ever. Armbruster, who sets up the symposium in Systems ofSurvival,ends it with a toast to civilization. 'So chancy,' murmurs Jasper, thoughtfully. 'Such a tightrope act. Always has been, of course. All the more reason to cross your fingers and drink to it.' A toast also to Jane Jacobs! The Fenlinist Companion to Literature in English HEATHER MURRAY Virginia Blain, Isobel Grundy, and Patricia Clements, editors. TIle Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present New Haven: Yale University Press 1990.2131. $49.95 WOLLSTONECRAFf, MARY, see Godwin (Mrs. M.W.) GODWIN, MRS. MARY WOLlSTONECRAFf (1759-97) nee Wollstonecraft, kept a school at Newington Green with her sister Eliza, and subsequently became governess to Lord Kingsborough's children. After this she was employed for five years by Johnson, a London publisher. In Paris she formed a connexion with Gilbert Imlay (1793-5), an American, with whom she had a daughter, Fanny; his infidelity drove her to attempted suicide. She married William Godwin in 1797, and died at the birth of her daughter, Mary, the future Mrs. Shelley. Her 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman' (1792) was a courageous attack on the conventions of the day. THE FEMINIST COMPANION TO LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 333 The above account of the career ofone of the eighteenth century's most interesting educators, ethicists, and polemicists (not to mention novelist, translator, editor, reviewer, and travel writer) is taken from the Oxford Compmlion to English Literature rather than the Feminist Companion to Literature in English. But it illustrates, as perhaps no one entry from the Feminist Companion can do, the raison d'etre for this new work. Editors Virginia Blain, Isobel Grundy, and Patricia Clements (the latter two from the University of Alberta), in conjunction with sixteen consulting and contributing editors and another fifty-eight contributors (as well as twenty-two research assistants and a legion of other helpers, informal advisors, and supports) have amassed a reference work which will be for some time the court of first resort for feminist literary scholars and students. The editors have been explicit in their introduction about the principles of selection, composition, and arrangement: this is, after alt not just a guide to women writers or women's writing, but a book with a declaredly feminist outlook. There are approximately 2,700 entries, primarily alphabetically arranged biobibliographical entries for individual authors. (Some listing by work avoids the problem ofmultiple entr~es for 'anonymous.') Thefamous, infamous, and unknown are all represented, as are a variety of genres in...

pdf

Share