1. These definitions are drawn from Neal Riemer and Douglas Simon, The New World of Politics: An Introduction to Political Science, 4th edn (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) 3.
2. Chantal Mouffe sees the political as an essentially antagonistic process involving contending collective identifications. See esp. Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).
3. Michael Sadleir, Blessington D’Orsay: A Masquerade (London: Constable, 1947) 189. I have drawn the biographical details in this discussion primarily from Sadleir’s study.
4. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1928; London: Penguin, 1967) 66.
5. Dorothy Mermin, Godiva’s Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830–1880 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993) 17, xvii