Introduction

Women Writers, Textual Genres and Scientific Knowledge

Abstract

This introduction introduces the eight essays that make up this special issue on "women writers, textual genres and scientific knowledge" from the mid-seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. The articles will be introduced as so many explorations into the question of how textuality, and textual genre in particular, might come to affect scientific writing in women's writing. In so doing, these essays help us apply critical pressure to the widespread idea that the only worthwhile scientific works by women writers were those exceptional instances which challenged the rules established by men in male-dominated intellectual landscapes.