Reading for the Law : British Literary History and Gender Advocacy.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Theory, Advocacy, and History -- Part One: Precedent -- Chapter One: Historiographies of Witchcraft for Feminist Advocacy: Historical Justice in Elizabeth Gaskell's Lois the Witch -- Chapter Two: Witchcraft Precedents as Literary History:From The Discoverie of Witchcraft to Sir Matthew Hale -- Chapter Three: The Historical Turn in Witchcraft Literature:From Enlightenment Historiography to Historical Realism -- Part Two: Agency -- Chapter Four: Theories and Histories of Agency: Mary Wollstonecraft's Narrative of the Reasonable Woman -- Chapter Five: Agency, Equity, Publicity:Compos Mentis in Charles Reade's Hard Cash and Lunacy Commission Reports -- Part Three: Testimony -- Chap ter Six: G endered Credibility: Testimony in Fictionand Indecent Assault -- Chapter Seven: Women's Legal Literacy and Pro Se Representation:From Griffith Gaunt to Georgina Weldon -- Part Four: The Motives of Advocacy -- Chapter Eight: Concealing Women's Mens Rea: Advocacy for Female Prisoners and Infanticidal Mothers -- Chapter Nine: The Secret Agency of Juries: Forging Resistanceagainst Sodomy Prosecution -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

The saliency of the nineteenth-century British literary culture stems in part from its place in a politico-legal tradition that produces the very conditions of narrative legal theorists' aspirations for meaningful social transformation in modern, multicultural democracies.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.