Reflections on Biography

Paula R. Backscheider, Philpott-Stevens Eminent Scholar, specializes in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, feminist criticism, and cultural studies. She is the author of several books including Daniel Defoe: His Life, (winner of the British Council Prize), Spectacular Politics, Reflections on Biography, and Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre (winner of the Modern Language Association Lowell Prize). Two of her books have been selected for the Choice Outstanding Academic Book award. She has published articles in PMLA, Theatre Journal, ELH, and many other journals. A former president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, she has held ACLS, NEH, and Guggenheim Fellowships and is one of the few American members of the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Edinburgh. Her most recent book is Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel (Johns Hopkins University Press).