Recovering a Sentimental Past

In Melissa Sodeman's Sentimental Memorials: Women and the Novel in Literary History, she uncovers traces in sentimental novels of a dynamic and prolific period in women's literary history. Sodeman demonstrates that women writers such as Sophia Lee, Anne Radcliff, Charlotte Smith, and Mary Robinson were aware of changes in the literary marketplace that threatened to exclude their novels, changes to which they responded in innovative ways. Sodeman argues that the formal structures of their novels memorialize the literary achievements and professional experiences of women writers. Her book, like the novels it treats, produces an alternative literary history that centers on women's fiction during a period of professionalization and the formation of a literary canon.