Fiction and Literary Studies
Here is a selection of published fiction
and literary critiques of fiction on single women,
focused mainly on Europe and North America.
Additions are greatly appreciated - please e-mail
the compiler at arachne [at] medusanet.ca
and I'll include them.
back
to main bibliography page
Ackerman, Karl. The Patron Saint of Unmarried
Women. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
Ashton-Warner, Sylvia. Spinster: A Novel.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958.
Bartolomeo, Christina. The Side of the Angels:
A Novel. New York: Scribner, 2002.
Belkin, Roslyn. "Rejects of the Marketplace: Old
Maids in Charlotte Bronte's Shirley." International
Journal of Women's Studies 4, no. 1 (1981): 50-66.
Berg, Elizabeth. Never Change. New York:
Pocket Books, 2001.
Berry, Philippa. Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan
Literature and the Unmarried Queen. London: Routledge,
1989.
Bushnell, Candace. Four Blondes. New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.
Carvill, Caroline. "The Stereotype of Spinsters in Southern Fiction." PhD Thesis, University of Arkansas, US, 1989.
Chambers-Schiller, Lee. "''Woman Is Born to
Love': The Maiden Aunt as Maternal Figure in Ante-Bellum
Literature." Frontiers 10, no. 1 (1988):
34-43.
Cheek, Mavis. Getting Back Brahms. London:
Faber and Faber, 1997.
Crottie, Julia M. The Lost Land: A Tale of a
Cromwellian-Irish Town, Being the Autobiography of
Miss Anita Lombard, 1780-1797. London: T.F. Unwin,
1901.
Davis, Jill. Girls' Poker Night. New York:
Random House, 2002.
Deegan, Dorothy. The Stereotype of the Single
Woman in American Novels: A Social Study with Implications
for the Education of Women. New York: Octagon
Books, 1969.
Deegan, Dorothy Yost. The Stereotype of the
Single Woman in American Novels: A Social Study with
Implications for the Education of Women. New
York: Octagon Books, 1969.
Doan, Laura L. Old Maids to Radical Spinsters:
Unmarried Women in the Twentieth-Century Novel.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Durban, Pam. So Far Back. New York: Picador
USA, 2000.
Esch, Deborah. New Essays on the House of Mirth.
Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press,
2001.
Fielding, Helen. Bridget Jones's Diary: A Novel.
London: Picador, 1996.
Frankau, Pamela. Problems of the Bachelor Girl, c.1920-40.
García Lorca, Federico, and John Edmunds. Four
Major Plays ["Doña Rosita the Spinster"]. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
Gissing, George, and Arlene Young. The Odd Women.
Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1998.
Greiner, Donald J. Women without Men: Female
Bonding and the American Novel of the 1980s.
Columbia [SC]: University of South Carolina Press,
1993.
Gross, Jennifer Lynn. ""Lonely Lives Are Not Necessarily
Joyless": Augusta Jane Evans's Macaria and the Creation
of a Place for Single Womanhood in the Postwar South."
American Nineteenth Century History [UK]
2, no. 1 (2001): 33-52.
Hallissy, Margaret. Clean Maids, True Wives,
Steadfast Widows: Chaucer's Women and Medieval Codes
of Conduct. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1993.
Hayward, Annette, and Lucie Joubert. La Vieille
Fille: Lectures D'un Personnage. Montréal: Triptyque,
2000.
Henry, DeWitt. The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts:
A Novel. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
2001.
Hickok, Kathleen. "The Spinster in Victoria's England:
Changing Attitudes in Popular Poetry by Women." Journal
of Popular Culture 15, no. 3 (1981): 119-31.
Hwang, Caroline. In Full Bloom. New York:
Dutton, 2003.
Kanwar, Anju. The Sound of Silence. New
York: P. Lang, 1999.
Katz, Susan Leslie. "`Singleness of Heart': Spinsterhood in Victorian Culture." PhD Thesis, Columbia University [US], 1988.
Kittredge, Katherine Ottaway. "'Tabby Cats Lead Apes in Hell': Spinsters in Eighteenth Century Life and Fiction." PhD Thesis, State University of New York, Binghamton [US], 1992.
Koppelman, Susan. Old Maids: Short Stories by
Nineteenth Century US Women Writers. Boston:
Pandora Press, 1984.
Lancelotta, Victoria. Here in the World.
Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2000.
Larsen, Anne R. "Legitimizing the Daughter's Writing:
Catherine Des Roches' Proverbial Good Wife." Sixteenth
Century Journal 21, no. 4 (1990): 559-574.
Leong, Liew Geok. Women
without Men. Singapore:
Times Books International,
2000.
Lubovich, Maglina. "‘Married
or Single?’ Bachelors,
Spinsters, and Critiques
of Marriage in Nineteenth-Century
American Literature, 1820–1870."
PhD Thesis, State University
of New York, Buffalo, US,
2006.
Ludwick, Patricia. Spinster: A Yarn in the Making.
Toronto, Ont.: Playwrights Canada Press, 1989.
Marinovitch, Sarolta. "Old Maids: Spinsterhood Suffered
or Independence Welcomed. American Women's Literature
of the Eighteen-Forties." European Contributions
to American Studies [Netherlands] 14 (1988):
261-70.
Maxwell, W. B. Spinster of This Parish.
London: Thornton Butterworth, 1922.
Mlynowski, Sarah. Milkrun. Don Mills, Ont.:
Red Dress Ink, 2001.
Mohin, Ann. The Farm She Was: A Novel.
Bridgehampton, N.Y.: Bridge Works Pub., 1998.
O'Brien, Edna. Down by the River. London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996.
Parsipur, Shahrnush. Women without Men: A Novella.
Translated by Kamran Talattof and Jocelyn Sharlet.
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998.
Pavâon, Alfredo. El Presente Insoportable: Soliloquio
De La Solterona: Lectura Y Anâalisis a Obras De Sergio
Galindo, Rosario Castellanos, Juan Vicente Melo, Aline
Pettersson E Inâes Arredondo. Xalapa, Veracruz,
Mâexico: Centro de Investigaciones Lingèuâistico-Literarias
Instituto de Investigaciones Humanâisticas Universidad
Veracruzana, 1990.
Prigger, Mary Skillings, and Betsy Lewin. Aunt
Minnie Mcgranahan. New York: Clarion Books, 1999.
Prou, Suzanne. The Patapharis Affair; a Novel.
Chicago,: H. Regnery Co., 1970.
Rosenthal, Naomi Braun. Spinster Tales and Womanly
Possibilities. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2002.
Sarton, May. The Magnificent Spinster: A Novel.
1st ed. New York: Norton, 1985.
Schine, Cathleen. The Love Letter. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1995.
Shea, Maura E. "Spinning toward Salvation: The Ministry
of Spinsters in Harriet Beecher Stowe." ATQ 10,
no. 4 (1996): 293-310.
Tarloff, Erik. Face-Time. New York: Crown
Publishers, 1999.
Trigiani, Adriana. Big Stone Gap: A Novel.
New York: Random House, 2000.
Tsagaris, Ellen M. The Subversion of Romance
in the Novels of Barbara Pym. Bowling Green,
OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press,
1998.
Wharton, Edith, and Shari Benstock. The House
of Mirth: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical
and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays
from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives Case
Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston, MA:
Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1994.
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith. Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Farm. Boston New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1903.
Wogan-Browne, J. "The Virgin's Tale." In Feminist
Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of
Bath and All Her Sect, eds. R. Evans and L. Johnson.
London: Routledge, 1994.
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