Editor's Note

Editor's Note With this volume of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture we offer once again some of the best contemporary scholarship on the Enlightenment. Originally presented at conferences of the regional or national societies, the fourteen essays selected for this volume demonstrate the vitality and diversity of the research in the area. The articles published here illustrate especially well the interdisciplinary range of the leading Enlightenment scholarship today and of the cross-fertilization that continues to develop in this field. The volume opens with four essays dealing with the economy of gender in the eighteenth century. In "Fashion and Frugality: Eighteenth-Century Pocket Books for Women" Jennie Batchelor studies the founding and development of le^-century ladies' pocket books and the relationship of this forgotten genre to the culture of women's periodicals. With the emergence of new commodities for women also comes financial risk and with it a potential threat to reputation. The link between finance and moral standing is the object of Leslie Richardson's contribution, '"Who Shall Restore My Lost Credit?' Rape, Reputation, and the Marriage Market." Through the reading of Mary Davy's novel, Richardson shows how the system of credit provides the foundation for family relationships, specifically with respect to the emergence of the modern institution of marriage. By exploring the way the unfortunate heroine, Miss Friendly, is exposed to the economy of reputation, the novel uncovers the problems raised by the definition of identity in a commercial economy. In "Making Good Use of History: Sarah Robinson Scott in the Republic of Letters" Betty Schellenberg explores the practical realities of the life of an intellectual woman in mideighteenth century England. Widely published and yet unknown, the figure of Robinson Scott exemplifies the difficulties faced by a woman in her attempts for inclusion in the intellectual community, as well as the impact of anonymity in the Republic of Letters. Paola Giuli's "Women Poets and Improvisers: Cultural Assumptions and Literary Values in Arcadia" studies the polemics surrounding the crowning of Corilla OlÃ-mpica in the years 1775-76 and the role played by gender values in the Academy. The article shows how the presence of women in the Roman Arcadia leads to denunciations of it as an effeminate institution. ix Editor's Note I χ The second section of this volume focuses on the visualization and representation of bodies. Candace Ward's '"Cruel Disorder': Female Bodies, Eighteenth-Century Fever Narratives, and the Sentimental Novel" examines the reciprocal relationship between medicine and sentimental fiction by concentrating on the fictionalization of medical discourse in the sentimental novel as well as on the use of the same emotional rhetoric in the discourse of physicians. This shared sentimental discourse leads to a greater understanding of the culture of sensibility in the Enlightenment. In "Remembering a Body of Work: Anatomist and Anatomical Designer Anna Morandi Manzolini" Rebecca Messbarger proposes a réévaluation of one of the few women anatomists in the early modern era, the Italian Anna Morandi Manzolini. Manzolini is a figure of great importance for the history of medical science who, despite international prestige and the official recognition of her work, remained on the periphery of the scientific community of her time. Through an analysis of her provocative self-portrait, Messbarger uncovers a more complex and accurate portrait of the lady anatomist. Géraldine Sheridan's "Views of Women at Work by the Royal Academicians: the Collection Descriptions des arts et métiers (1761-1789)" examines the depictions of the working lives of women in 18lh-century France as recorded on the copper-plate engravings of the Science Academy in Paris. By analyzing these illustrations in relation to the texts that accompany them Sheridan points to the discrepancies between the visual imagery and the graphic text and also shows how the pictures end up being the only testimony to the actual work done by women. Joanna Stalnaker's "Painting Life, Describing Death: Problems of Representation and Style in the Histoire Naturelle''' analyzes the literary practice of description by Buffon and Daubenton, the co-authors of the French encyclopedia of natural history. This article explores the relationship between the verbal and visual forms of representation, reflecting on an epistemological shift...