This ground-breaking anthology brings together a wide selection of women's writing from the Romantic period (excluding fiction and drama), most of which is unavailable elsewhere. These include writings by well-known women authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Harriet Martineau, Mary Shelley and Dorothy Wordsworth, as well as the less well known. Covering a representative range of public and private genres from poetry, critical essays, travel literature and political commentary to diaries and journals, the texts are arranged chronologically and are accompanied by introductions, chronologies, guides to the authors and works, textual notes and further reading. Care has been taken to balance extracts and complete texts.