“Together, the essays work to broaden our understanding of literary history.” - Book Riot, “20 Great Essay Collections from 2016”
“This hot debut… seeks to be as entertaining as the novels it describes.… Questions and expands the notion of canon and memory, reducing the old assumptions to just a lot of pride and prejudice.” - Brit + Co
“A true delight, both for its honorable mission and for its eloquent execution.” - Chronic Bibliophilia
“Masterfully weaves a tale of history, culture, and writing.… Not Just Jane is a gem, a rediscovery of female perseverance in a patriarchal society, and shows how deftly, artfully, and successfully female writers can navigate their circumstances.” - Los Angeles Review of Books
“Shelley DeWees has admirably filled in the gaps for us, introducing us to the many daring, exciting women writers out there beyond Austen, the Brontës, Eliot, and Woolf. If you want to know not only what women were up against in the pre-modern era but also how women turned to the pen as a source of liberation, then this is the book for you.” - Anne Boyd Rioux, author of Constance Fenimore Wilson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist
“Not merely delightful nonfiction. It’s a moving and heartfelt tribute to seven forgotten literary foremothers whose works were widely admired and just as widely consigned to moldering oblivion. What we need are many more books in the spirit of Not Just Jane.” - Lyndsay Faye, author of Jane Steele
“Not Just Jane restores seven of England’s most fascinating and subversive literary voices to their rightful places in history. Shelley DeWees tells each woman writer’s story with wit, passion, and an astute understanding of the society in which she lived and wrote.” - Dr. Amanda Foreman, New York Times bestselling author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire and creator of docuseries The Ascent of Woman
“Reveal[s] the interesting lives and strong characters of these oft-forgotten writers…. This book succeeds at making readers aware of the gaps in our knowledge of British literature…planting the seed that there are many treasures out there waiting for a second chance. - Kirkus Reviews
“Interweaving the fascinating stories…and the social, cultural, and economic realities of their times, an insightful group portrait of these groundbreaking women emerges. Lively…. An important contribution to the scholarship of women’s literature.” - Booklist
“An industrious work by an adoring reader…. Her converting zeal is apparent on every page, holding up passages of poems and novels to tempt us. With verve and brio, she imagines her modern self into her subjects’ minds.” - Wall Street Journal
“Fun.... Lovers of Austen’s books and film adaptations of her work will find much to enjoy in this informative overview of authors.” - Library Journal
“DeWees’s biographical assessment of seven English women authors of the 18th and 19th centuries marks an enthusiastic…addition to the ongoing project of recovering ‘lost’ women writers…. She does important work in challenging the notion of canon.” - Publishers Weekly
“I found Not Just Jane delightfully engaging. DeWees emerges as the Indiana Jones of literary archeology, and we are forever in her debt.” - Laurel Ann Nattress, editor of Jane Austen Made Me Do It and Austenprose.com
“Second Wave feminism reclaimed long-forgotten late 18th and early 19th century ‘authoresses’, but they still largely remain unknown outside the academic community. Now Shelley DeWees’s readable and engaging study of seven of the best introduces them to a wider audience. They deserve it.” - Professor Janet Todd, OBE, editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen
“Women’s contributions to British literature were both broader and deeper than most of us know. Shelley DeWees has admirably filled in the gaps for us, introducing us to the many daring, exciting women writers out there beyond Austen, the Brontës, Eliot, and Woolf. And she has done so in such an entertaining way that readers will thrill over their new literary heroines. If you want to know not only what women were up against in the pre-modern era but also how women turned to the pen as a source of liberation, then this is the book for you. It is sure to inspire women readers, particularly those who write or who aspire to—in other words, those who most need to know that the accomplishments of women in the past were anything but few and far between.” - Anne Boyd Rioux, author of Constance Fenimore Wilson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist