SOURCE: English, Deirdre. “Wollstonecraft to Lady Di.” Nation 272, no. 23 (11 June 2001): 44-9.

In the following review, English lauds the central themes of Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage, complimenting the unlikely parallels that Showalter creates between the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Here we go, starting on what promises to be a pleasantly engrossing tour of the landmarks of three centuries of Anglo-American intellectual feminism, guided by a seriously impressive scholar, Elaine Showalter of Princeton University. Showalter is the erudite author of some classic feminist literary texts and a founder of women's studies, yet she has a light and deft hand on the wheel. It's only that—there aren't a lot of signposts that tell us where we're going as we start out, and Showalter breezily informs us that whether women participated in the organized women's movements of their day or thought of themselves...