The contributers to this volume draw on feminist ideas and discuss the importance of feminist scholarship in developing an approach to literature that focuses on gender. It covers all three major literary genres - prose fiction, poetry and drama (including performance) - and examines a wide range of themes, including: the conflict between "feminity" and creativity in women's lives and writing; the construction of female characters; autobiography and fiction; the gendering of language; spheres of influence among women writers; the importance of "a room of one's own"; and the intersection of race, class and gender within writing, reading and interpretation. Works discussed include a range of poetry by women and men; and works of fiction by Louise May Alcott, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jamaica Kincaid, Virginia Woolf, Susan Glaspell, Caryl Churchil, Alice Walker and Henrik Ibsen. A selection of key critical texts is included (extracts from the work of, among others, Maya Angelou, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, Toni Morrison and Elaine Showlater).