We are so delighted to report that we’ve added four new texts to Women Writers Online. These are: Aphra Behn’s 1689 The History of the Nun, Emily Clark’s 1819 The Esquimaux (vol. 2), Frances Sheridan’s 1791 Eugenia and Adelaide (vol. 2), and Lydia Howard Sigourney’s 1824 Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since. These texts span three centuries in the WWO collection—and their geographic scope is equally wide, representing settings in Spain, Belgium, Scotland, and New England, among many others. For more information on these texts, and the WWP’s other recent publications, please see this list of new additions to WWO.

We have also published a new folder from the Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson, created in partnership with the editors of The Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson: A Scholarly Digital Edition. Dated c. 23 July 1812–November 1813, this long folder reflects Emerson’s reading of John Foxe’s Lives of the Martyrs and Edward Taylor’s Rule and Exercises of Holy Living; the folder also includes Emerson’s discussions of the writings of moral philosopher Joseph Butler and a new biography of Martin Luther, whom Emerson reveres for his courage and faith. As the editors’ introduction to this folder explains, “Emerson’s attention at this turbulent political time is drawn to multiple scenes—from the local, where she notes the public execution of two criminals in Boston; to the national, as the continued war of 1812 raises fears for a potential military invasion of the city and many residents prepare to flee; to the global, as she laments Napoleon’s recent invasion of Russia.”

Accompanying the publication of these early texts by women, we have added three new exhibits to Women Writers in Context, an experimental publication series designed to engage readers in exploration and discovery of topics related to early women’s writing. The first of these, “Mary Moody Emerson as Reader and Reviewer,” discusses Emerson’s “extensive, experimental, and eclectic” reading and writing practices, showing that the “wealth of her literary and philosophical milieu, her engagement with the public intellectual marketplace, and her generic experiments represent a significant example of textual reception and circulation in antebellum America.” The second, “Maria Edgeworth in Review,” introduces several key topics from early transatlantic literary culture—textual constructions of national identities, gender and authorship, publication and review practices, and the development of the novel—as they are evident in periodical responses to Edgeworth’s works in the recently-published collection, Women Writers in Review. The third, “Women, Mathematics, and the Periodical Tradition in Britain: or a History of Women Rocking Math from the Beginning,” is the first in a new series of exhibits considering early women writers and mathematics, edited by Jacqueline Wernimont. These exhibits were created as part of the NEH-funded Cultures of Reception research initiative, which studied the reception and readership of early women’s writing.

We hope that these new publications will complement each other, inviting readers to explore works by women in various contexts and from multiple angles—and that our readers find these texts as interesting & enjoyable as we do!