Seductive Forms is a highly praised account of women's contribution to the `rise of the novel' in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in England. The prose fiction of Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood is considered as both providing erotic pleasure for its readers and scoring political points for its partisan (Tory) authors.
...an extraordinary rich and interesting book...the range of sources is extensive, the readings provocative, and the grasp of the relation between text and culture both assured and suggestive. And, again characteristically, the subtlety of the feminist theory she deploys allows a persuasive new reading of the problematic 'rise of the novel'.
