The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats

321 coherence to the project of creating a single edition from Leapor’s two published volumes, while still preserving the important tonal differences that exist between them. As the editors note, the bulk of Leapor’s more strident, ideologically complex verse appeared in the 1751 volume ; hence, it means something in Leapor Studies to maintain this division. The editors have also chosen, I think correctly , to retain original spelling and punctuation throughout, and they reproduce several typographical aspects of the original texts (full caps, italics, first-word small caps, and inconsistent use of all of these in individual poem titles). The result is aesthetically striking on the page, and the poetic texts throughout are well executed, as befitting an Oxford edition. Less befitting, however, is the editors’ system of light annotation. The editors appear to be thinking of their specialist readers when terms like ‘‘coursers,’’ ‘‘Grub-street,’’ and ‘‘peck’’ go unglossed. Certainly non-British students could use some help here, and even the specialist might benefit from being reminded that a ‘‘peck’’ amounted to the dry-measure equivalent of two gallons in the period. So when the upper-servant ‘‘Sophronia’’ upbraids the scribbling ‘‘Mira’’ (Leapor ’s poetic alter ego) in ‘‘An Epistle to Artemisia: On Fame,’’ that her ‘‘Head will grow prepost’rous, like a Peck’’ if she continues writing, readers would be alerted to an amusing, voice-specific, and thematically appropriate image of the would-be poet’s head swelling due to extended mental labor, and perhaps even writerly pride. Earlier in this same poem Leapor’s reference to ‘‘building Castles’’ is also passed over by the editors. Leapor invokes this phrase in its metaphorical sense (indulging an idle fancy) often in her work, as in the autobiographical poem ‘‘Mopsus; or, The Castle-Builder’’ and in a letter where she describes her own ‘‘excellent Knack at Castlebuilding .’’ Here, for some reason, the phrase receives a note, but it rather lazily refers the reader to ‘‘Mopsus,’’a poem of over 500 lines. The relative obscurity of the phrase, coupled with its repetition in Leapor’s work, suggests the need for a gloss in the first instance, with subsequent notes referring back to it. But the editorial apparatus also has its strengths, especially the headnotes that also appear in the ‘‘Commentary’’ section for most of the poetic texts. These notes often illuminate Leapor’s poetic sources, particularly her engagement with Pope’s poems. Even when the editors are forced into educated speculation, the information provided is always plausible and economically presented. There are no known manuscript sources for Leapor’s poems, but the ‘‘Textual Notes’’ section covers well the few variant readings of poems that gained earlier publication in some form. The editors make no standard-edition claims for The Works of Mary Leapor, though there is much to recommend it. This edition is sure to gain Leapor new readers and spark further critical inquiry into this capable and most extraordinary poet. William J. Christmas San Francisco State University ALESSA JOHNS. Women’s Utopias of the Eighteenth Century. Urbana and Chicago : Illinois, 2003. Pp. xiii ⫹ 212. $34.95. Given that women occupied a subaltern position without political citizenship , one wonders what a feminist utopia of the eighteenth century would look like, and, perhaps more incredibly, what modern readers could learn from such 322 theories and narratives. This is precisely Ms. Johns’s topic in her intelligent and admirably clear analysis of women’s utopian writing circa 1695 to 1798. These writers envision communities of women enacting republican principles, valuing education, achieving economic independence (or at least escaping demoralizing dependence), and practicing charity and benevolence. Unlike traditional utopias, these narratives construct ‘‘partial visions ’’based in realistic locales, and they imagine the survival of their communities through replication, reproduction, and transcription, rather than through revolution or radical social change. Their methods are locally situated and yet globally reaching, partially realized and yet based on universal ideals, attentive to the needs of ‘‘the Other’’ but respectful of the hegemonic order. In short, Ms. Johns discovers these texts resist the totalizing theories of the Enlightenment often articulated by some recent postmodernists . Astell is the originator of this lineage of feminist utopias. On one level, Ms...