"The primary goal of this book is to pull women writers from the cutting room floor of essay scholarship and return them to their rightful place in the essay canon. The book brings together forty-six women essayists whose work spans nearly four centuries and, in doing so, proves that women have participated in the essay tradition since its modern beginnings in the sixteenth century. Most of their essays fit easily into the main narrative of the development of the modern essay. One of the reasons I attempt to insert these writers back into the essay tradition by way of a history of the essay itself is to demonstrate that very point. The essay form need not contort itself to accept these women as they were or are. Many of them achieved significant success within whatever essay form ruled the day; others bent the rules, though sometimes imperceptibly, to make room for themselves. All told, they represent the missing piece to a larger history of the essay" --