Isobel Hurst examines the role of women writers in the Victorian reception of ancient Greece and Rome, showing that they had a greater imaginative engagement with classical literature than has previously been acknowledged. The restrictions which applied to women's access to classical learningliberated them from the repressive and sometimes alienating effects of a traditional classical education. Women writers' reworkings of classical texts serve a variety of purposes: to validate women's claims to authorship, to demand access to education, to highlight feminist issues through theheroines of ancient tragedy, to repudiate the warrior ethos of ancient epic. | Victorian Women Writers and the Classics by Isobel Hurst, Paperback | Indigo Chapters