This publication traces the lives and works of Russia's women writers from the Middle Ages to the present. The volume is supported by reference features including a bibliography and guide to writers and their works. Table of Contents: Introduction Adele Barker and Jehanne M Gheith: 1. Women's image in Russian medieval literature / Rosalind McKenzie. 2. Sappho, Corinna and Niobe: genres and personae in Russian women's writing, 1760-1820 / Catriona Kelly: 3. The inexperienced muse: Russian women and poetry in the first half of the nineteenth century / Judith Vowles: 4. Women of the 1830s and 1850s: alternative periods / Jehanne Gheith 5. 'A particle of our soul': pre-revolutionary autobiography by Russian women writers / Mary Zirin: 6. The women of Russian Montparnasse, Paris, 1920-1940 / Catherine Ciepiela: 7. Women in Russian symbolism: beyond the algebra of love / Jenifer Presto: 8. The Eastern path of exile: Russian women's writing in China / Olga Bakich and Carol Ueland: 9. Realist prose writers, 1881-1929 / Rosalind Marsh: 10. Women and gender in post-symbolist poetry and the Stalin era / Katherine Hodgson: 11. Writing the female body politic (1945-1985) / Beth Holmgren: 12. In their own words? Soviet women writers and the search for self / Anna Krylova: 13. Women's poetry since the sixties / Stephanie Sandler: 14. The persistence of memory: women's prose since the sixties / Adele Barker: 15. Perestroika and post-Soviet prose: from dazzle to dispersal / Helena Goscilo.