ABSTRACT
The occasion of marking the significant anniversary of the Chawton House Library and for recognizing the Chawton House Library Series seemed a good time to pause and reflect on the contributions made by both and their implications for textual scholarship and women's literary history. The era in which the novels in the series were first published was an explosive era for women writers, many of whom were engaged in the new profession of writing novels but also experimented with other genres. The work of recovery has changed in nature over the years. In previous decades, the underlying problem was the dearth of texts and a basic lack of knowledge of the works of early women writers, whereas now much of that groundwork has been done. Besides the introduction, a second area of contribution is the annotation, which identifies the allusions and highlights any unusual use of language.
