This manuscript examines the connection between gender and literature in nation building through the study of the life and work of `A’isha Taymur (1840-1902), who was a nineteenth century Egyptian woman writer. She is widely acknowledged as the only prominent woman writer during this period, but there is not any work in Arabic or English that is devoted her work and how it introduced important innovations in what are assumed to be traditional literary forms addressing the major issues of the day including the crisis of dynastic government and the family. Methodologically, the manuscript places Taymur’s life and work in the historical and literary context of her time comparing her work with that of others. It also devotes separate chapters for the discussion of her work of fiction where she discusses the reform of dynastic government including a role for women, her social commentary which offer her own ijtihad/interpretation of the Qur’anic verses that deal with male leadership over women in the family arguing that this role is contingent on the fulfillment of male familial obligation and her poetry that reveals her involvement in dynastic politics and the opposition of her family and class to her unusual interests and roles. Audiences that may have an interest in this manuscript include political scientists, historians, literary critics, students of gender, feminist studies and intellectual history.
