These essays challenge that epic is regarded as being in the exclusive domain of the male literary genius. They demonstrate the ways in which women writers have successfully adapted the masculine epic tradition to suit their own aesthetic needs and to express their own heroic literary, social, and historical visions.

Contents: Introduction: muses with pens. Part 1 British Women's Prose Epics: Romancing the epic: Lady Mary Wroth's Urania and literary traditions, Sheila Cavanagh; Female heroic action in Frances Burney's Camilla, Elizabeth Kraft; Virginia Woolf and the modern epic, Karla Alwes; Epic form and (re)vision in Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Bernard Schweizer. Part 2 British Women's Verse Epics: Gendering Telemachus: Anna Seward and the epic rewriting of F lon's T maque, Adeline Johns-Putra; The female epic and the journey toward self-definition in Mary Tighe's Psyche, Debnita Chakravarti; 'Hear the voice of the [female] bard': Aurora Leigh as a female romantic epic, Peggy Dunn Bailey. Part 3 American Women's Verse Epics: The daughters of Penelope: tradition and innovation in American epics by women, Alan C. Jalowitz; Revisionary postwar heroism in Gwendolyn Brooks's Annie Allen, Jenny Goodman; Against the fathers' amnesia: Sharon Doubiago, Hard Country, and women's epic, Jeremy M. Downes. Bibliography; Index.