This book is about women writers writing Self-Elegy. That is, they write elegies for themselves as if they were already dead when they were writing-- though of course they're still alive when writing their self-elegies! The book asks why self-elegies were a popular form of writing for a few important women writers in England and America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book focuses on Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, and Sylvia Plath, with some chapters on Mary Shelley's novella Matilda, and Christina Rossetti.