Contributors examine the literature that challenges widely held assumptions about the form of the family, familial authority patterns, and the function of courtship, marriage, and family life from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Topics include: the family as a microcosm of the larger political sphere in Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Elizabeth Fenwick, Mrs. Opie, and Mary Shelley, and alternatives to the nuclear patriarchal family in Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Mary Louisa Molesworth.