Books by Terry Castle

As Samuel Richardson's 'exemplar to her sex,' Clarissa in the eponymous novel published in 1748 is the paradigmatic female victim. In Clarissa's Ciphers, Terry Castle delineates the ways in which, in a world where only voice carries authority, Clarissa is repeatedly silenced, both metaphorically and literally. A victim of rape, she is first a victim of hermeneutic abuse. Drawing on feminist criticism and hermeneutic theory, Castle examines the question of authority in the novel. By tracing the patterns of abuse and exploitation that occur when meanings are arbitrarily and violently imposed, she explores the sexual politics of reading.

In essays on literary images of lesbianism from Defoe and Diderot to Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes, on the homosexual reputation of Marie Antoinette, on the lesbian writings of Anne Lister, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Janet Flanner, and on Henry James's The Bostonians, Castle shows how a lesbian presence can be identified in the literature, history, and culture of the past three centuries.

A literary exploration of the friendship between Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall, this book sheds light on the relationship between gay men and lesbian women in the first half of 20th century Europe.

"A wealth of historical detail about the masquerade in 18th-century life and literature and a stimulating interpretation of what its prominence in that period reveals about the nature of identity and narrative. . . . An important contribution to literary criticism and to the history of leisure, this book will confirm Castle's place among the major influences on the most exciting current scholarship in 18th century literature and gender studies."--Philological Quarterly

Boss Ladies Watch Out! is about women as critics. The brilliant literary essayist Terry Castle writes with an intelligence and style that brings her subject to light and to task.