Grandmothers in the archive: Three digital collections of women's writing

The Orlando Project: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present, which includes searchable entries on over a thousand writers from the medieval era to the present day; A Celebration of Women Writers, which provides full texts by female authors across many time periods, along with relevant links; and Women Writers Online, which features transcriptions of texts published between 1526 and 1850.2 1 ask not only what opportunities for research these archives create, but also how such opportunities may shape feminist thought and work by bringing broad and complex female literary communities to light, helping scholars balance formal and historical methodologies, and providing a new perspective on the gendering of genre. Because books and courses focused solely on female authors are the exception rather than the rule, the same names and titles often crop up time and again in print resources that are dedicated to the work of women. [...]they may want to decide whether their main purpose is to write women into mainstream literary history - by including more male authors alongside female ones, for example - or to propose a separate canon.