This collection of essays gives an overview of key issues in Russian women's writing and of important representations of women by men, between 1600 and the present, exploring the differences between the writing of women and men in Russia. It combines a study of the history and biography of previously neglected women writers with close readings of literary texts, demonstrating that the work of many Russian writers contains much of interest for contemporary women readers. (First published in 1996.) Contents: 1 - Introduction: new perspectives on women and gender in Russian literature / Rosalind Marsh: Part I: Historical and biographical perspectives: 2 - Women in seventeenth-century Russian literature / Rosalind McKenzie: 3 - Conflicts over gender and status in early nineteenth-century Russian literature: the case of Anna Bunina and her poem ‘Padenie Faetona’ / Wendy Rosslyn: 4 - Reading the future: women and fortune-telling in Russia (1770–1840) / Faith Wigzell: 5 - Russian women writers of the nineteenth century / Ol'ga Demidova: 6 - The ‘woman question’ of the 1860s, and the ambiguity of the ‘learned woman’ / Arja Rosenholm: 7 - Carving out a career: women prose writers, 1885–1917, the biographical background / Charlotte Rosenthal: 8 - The fate of women writers in literature at the beginning of the twentieth century: ‘A. Mirè’, Anna Mar, Lidiia Zinov'eva-Annibal / Mariia Mikhailova: 9 - Lidiia Zinov'eva-Annibal's The Singing Ass: a woman's view of men and Eros / Pamela Davidson: 10 - Anastasiia Verbitskaia reconsidered / Rosalind Marsh: 11 - Soviet woman of the 1980s: self-portrait in poetry / Elena Trofimova: Part II: The perspective of literary criticism: 12. - The silence of rebellion: women in the work of Leonid Andreev / Eva Buchwald: 13 - Poor Liza: the sexual politics of Elizaveta Bam by Daniil Kharms / Graham Roberts: 14 - The crafting of a self: Lidiia Ginzburg's early journal / Jane Gary Harris: 15 - Voyeurism and ventriloquism: Aleksandr Velichanskii's Podzemnaia nimfa / Gerald S. Smith: 16 - Thinking self in the poetry of Ol'ga Sedakova / Stephanie Sandler: 17 - Women's space and women's place in contemporary Russian fiction / Helena Goscilo