Highlighting the novels of Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Amelia Alderson Opie, and Jane Austen, the book relates these works to contemporary representations of female sexuality, pregnancy, and breastfeeding, to parliamentary debates about child custody, and to discourses about colonialism and racial difference. It offers a cultural context in which to read various works of early women novelists, while placing the concept of motherhood in a broad historical context.