America is now wholly given over to a d d mob of scribbling women and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash... Taking Hawthornes famous 1855 complaint about women writers as a starting point for consideration Scribbling Women and the Short Story Form is a collection of fourteen critical essays about the short fiction of British and American women writers. This anthology takes a feminist approach examining the liberating possibilities for women writers of the form of the short story a genre often associated with alienation or subversion the writer Frank OConnor describes the form as marginal or outlaw. Covering the work of selected women writers from the 1850s through the late twentieth century this collection includes essays on wellknown authors such as Rebecca Harding Davis Louisa May Alcott Kate Chopin Katherine Anne Porter Flannery OConnor Cynthia Ozick and Ursula K. Le Guin alongside essays on Harriett Prescott Spofford Ruth Stewart L. T. Meade Alice DunbarNelson Zitkalaa Sui Sin Far and Lydia Davis lessknown authors whose stories offer rich ground for consideration.