[Sex and Subterfuge: Women Novelists to 1850] is a book of fashion rather than of substance;… it is difficult to sympathise with its vague pioneering spirit and lack of critical direction. Ms Figes provides a roughly chronological survey of the novel written by and about women during a particularly fertile period of seventy or so years up to 1850, and she begins with a strong assertion: 'If there is such a thing as the classical novel in English literature, and I think there is, then women were responsible for defining and refining it'…. But when she comes to defend this bold thesis the thinness of her research is at once obvious, and her critical framework degenerates into a series of unhelpful and naive remarks. (p. 90)

These are not fresh ideas, and Ms Figes is content to follow them along well-trodden paths. There is no consideration of the many lesser known...