'Eve Bites Back': Anna Beer on an alternative history of English literature

Event image for 'Eve Bites Back': Anna Beer

Tuesday 31 January 2023, 5.30pm - 7pm
Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College

Join us for the OCLW Linton Lecture, delivered by Dr Anna Beer on her new book Eve Bites Back: An Alternative History of English Literature.

In Eve Bites Back (Oneworld Publications), Anna Beer explores the lives and work of eight women across five centuries - all game-changers, ground-breakers, or simply brilliant authors in their particular genre. Some, like Jane Austen, are at the heart of our culture. Others are barely known.

Anna Beer's Linton Lecture will examine, critically, one of the most fascinating challenges thrown up by literary biography. The majority of the authors in Eve Bites Back wanted their work to be read, not their lives. Often their families felt the same way - Cassandra Austen's destruction of her sister, Jane's, letters is not an isolated incident. These women (and their supporters) are seeking to hide the life, hoping that the work will be the more clearly seen, in the same way that some feminists now warn against the biographical turn because it will lead only to sexism.

Anna will argue that it was a risk she was willing to take, as she attempts to hold the life and the work in the same frame. She writes that, for her, 'it remains the most powerful way to appreciate these women’s achievements as authors and to understand why, still, they and their work constitute an alternative history of literature in English.'

Anna Beer is a cross-disciplinary scholar and biographer, working at the intersection of literature, history and the arts. The author of lives of John Milton, William Shakespeare, and a groundbreaking group biography focusing on female composers (Sounds and Sweet Airs: the Forgotten Women of Classical Music), her most recent book is Eve Bites Back: An Alternative History of English Literature (2022).

This lecture follows an afternoon colloquium on Writing Women, which is open to all (more information here).

Register for the colloquium or lecture (or both) here.

The Linton Lecture will be followed by a drinks reception for event speakers, OCLW Linton Friends, OCLW Visiting Scholars and invited guests.

This event will take place in the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium (LWA) (accessibility information). Wolfson College advises caution by wearing masks and not attending if you are feeling unwell.