Helen Taylor is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Exeter, Honorary Fellow of the British Association of American Studies, and Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow 2016-18. She has taught English and American literature at the universities of the West of England, Bristol, Warwick, and Exeter, where she was Head of the School of English. A specialist in literature and culture of the American South and women's writing, she has published widely in both areas. Her books include Scarlett's Women: Gone With the Wind and its Female Fans (1989, reprinted 2014), Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture through a Transatlantic Lens (2001), and The Daphne du Maurier Companion (2007), as well as a BFI Film Classic on Gone With the Wind (2015). Curator, Chair, and participant in many literature festivals, she was the first Director of the Liverpool Literary Festival, 2016 and 2018.

• Preface: 'A Friend, a Bible, a Perfume' Part One: How, Where, and Why Women Read Fiction Introduction 1: 'Cheap Sweet Vacations': Reading as a Woman Rosie Jackson: 'What Their Books Yield or, Why I am Not Buying a Kindle' Part Two: What Women Read 2: Reading as a Girl U A Fanthorpe: The Poet on her childhood reading 3: Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, the Novels Women Love Best 4: Romance and Erotica: Fiction by Women for Women 5: Women, Crime, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy dovegreyreader: The Literary Blogger Part Three: Writers and Readers 6: Women Writers on their Reading and Readers 7: Book Clubs in Women's Life Stories 8: Festivals, Literary Tourism, and Pilgrimage Fiction in Lives, Lives in Fiction 9: The Stories of Our Lives Appendix: Questionnaire about women's fiction reading

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