Rachel Bowlby, Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University

Rachel Bowlby is Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. Her previous books include Just Looking and Carried Away, both about the history of shopping; Still Crazy After All These Years: Women, Writing and Psychoanalysis; Shopping with Freud; Feminist Destinations and Further Essays on Virginia Woolf; and Freudian Mythologies: Greek Tragedy and Modern Identities.

...fluid and engaging... - Terri Apter, The TLS

Here Bowlby's widely celebrated talent as a literary critic is demonstrated to quite spectacular effect. Literary critics - academics in general - are permanently aware of the pressure to make their work "relevant", and in less skilled hands the parts of this book concerned with contemporary culture might have appeared worlds away from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. This book, however, is an instance of genuine dialogue between the contemporary and the historical ... an extraordinary level of insight. - Bryony Randall, Times Higher Education

[Rachel Bowlby] finds some intriguing antecedents to our world of surrogacy, fertility treatment and adoption (and, brilliantly, in the case of Mary, mother of Jesus, to artificial insemination) in plot twists that are, in essence, novelists' decisions to rupture reality so as better to make it serve their specific emotional, psychological and artistic needs. - Rachel Cusk, New Statesman

This book will undoubtably be worth reading both by those who wish to explore the controversial issues arising from new reproductive technologies, and by those whose interests are literary and who would appreciate the detailed examination of classic texts. - Alison Carter, Solas