Exploring the process of ageing in its cultural reflections, refractions and reimaginings, the contributors to Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture analyse how artists, writers, directors and performers challenge, and in some cases reaffirm, cultural constructions of ageing women, as well as give voice to ageing women’s subjectivities.

1. Introduction; Cathy McGlynn, Margaret O’Neill & Michaela Schrage-Früh.- Part I: NARRATIVES OF AGEING.- 2. Making the Invisible Visible: The Presence of Older Women Artists in Early Modern Artistic Biography; Julia K. Dabbs.- 3. Losing One’s Self: The Depiction of Female Dementia Sufferers in Iris (2001) and The Iron Lady (2011); Eva Adelseck.- 4. “Embarking, Not Dying”: Clare Boylan’s Beloved Stranger as Reifungsroman; Michaela Schrage-Früh.- 5. Intersection, Interoception and Interruption: The Age Performances of Peggy Shaw; Bridie Moore.- II: SOCIAL ROLES: MOTHERS, WIDOWS, SPINSTERS.- 6. Closing In: Spatial Restrictions for Ageing Mothers in Jane Austen; Amber Jones.- 7. “No One Noticed Her”: Ageing Spinsters and Youth Culture in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Short Stories; Cathy McGlynn.- 8. Stories of Motherhood and Ageing in ABC’s Television Programme Once Upon a Time; Katherine Whitehurst.- 9. “She Says She’s Thirty-Five but She’s Really Fifty-One”: Rebranding the Middle-Aged Postfeminist Protagonist in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones: Mad about The Boy; Lucinda Rasmussen.- Part III: THE BODY AND EMBODIMENT; 10. Older Women and Sexuality On-Screen: Euphemism and Evasion?; Susan Liddy.- 11. A Certain Truth in Fiction: Perceptions of the Ageing Process in Irish Women’s Fiction; Theresa Wray.-12. Future and Present Imaginaries: The Politics of the Ageing Female Body in Lena Dunham’s Girls (HB0, 2012 – present); Ros Jennings and Hannah Grist.-13. The New Model Subject: ‘Coolness’ and the Turn to Older Women Models in Lifestyle and Fashion Advertising.- Deborah Jermyn and Anne Jerslev.- 14. Performances of Situated Knowledge in the Ageing Female Body; EL Putnam.- Part IV: CLASS, RACE AND AGENCY.- 15. “I Become Shameless as a Child”: Childhood, Femininity and Older Age in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron; AntoinettePretorius.-16. African American Humour and the Construction of a Mature Female Middle-Class Identity in Clarence Major’s Such Was the Season; Saskia Marguerita Fürst.-17. “This is How Time Unfolds When You Are Old”: Ageing, Subjectivity and Joseph O’Connor’s Ghost Light; Margaret O’Neill.- 18. The Visibility of Women’s Ageing and Agency in Suzanne Lacy’s The Crystal Quilt (1987) and Silver Action (2013); Kate Antosik-Parsons. 19. Afterword; Germaine Greer. 

“The essays collected in the volume ‘Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture‘ provide a welcome and concise overview of gendered approaches to Age Studies. Bringing together important concepts and topics of cultural gerontology, they also map out new directions such as the postcolonial perspective.” (PD Dr. Heike Hartung, University of Potsdam, Germany)“This book offers a unique appraisal of visual cultures of women’s ageing across literature, the arts and contemporary mass media. It is wonderfully positive without shrinking from matters of the body, dementia and death.  Its well-written and empirically rich chapters revitalise feminist critical accounts of age and open up space for much needed intergenerational and interdisciplinary dialogue.  The book is a 'must read' for cultural gerontologists and feminists - of all ages!” (Jayne Raisborough, Leeds Beckett University, UK, author of Lifestyle Media and the Formation of the Self and Fat Bodies, Health and the Media) “A wonderfully rich and textured account of the ways our culture presents the aging woman. A rich treasure store of critique and insight.” (Julia Twigg, University of Kent, UK)

Stellar contributor list: includes an afterword by world-renowned feminist writer Germaine Greer, and contributions from leading scholars in the field Ambitious approach: essays are interdisciplinary and bring together thinkers from the fields of literature studies, cultural studies, feminist and women’s studies, and ageing studies Highly topical: the concept of women and ageing is enjoying a boom period, and this project will be extremely well-placed to capitalise on, and build on, that foundation Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras