The press pod in Charlotte Square is like a novelty igloo with recycling bins and literary reviews, and better coffee than the Spiegelbar. This windy afternoon I find out from the pod ladies that last night's visit from the Poet Laureate's deceased mother was, in fact, the tattoo fireworks.

I have time for a skim of the Scottish Review of Books and a guilty phone call to a neglected friend in Glasgow before scooting over to the RBS main tent, sinking to my ankles in the muddy grass in an effort to dodge the queue.

Elaine Showalter is promoting her new book of feminist literary criticism, A Jury of Her Peers; American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. Jacki McGlone aptly chairs the event. Showalter tells us that she decided on the title before beginning the book; named for the Susan Glaspell story which tells of a woman on trial for killing her husband in a remote farmhouse, and the two police wives who find evidence of her madness, then destroy the evidence of her crime, it aims to critique the work of women writers in fairness.

Showalter explains that she was first asked to write the book in the early 1970's, following the publication of A Literature of Their Own; British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. She declined then, largely due to the legwork involved. Working on A Literature of Their Own involved digging through dusty records by candlelight, in freezing rural libraries, still filed under the names of the authors' husbands and fathers. Doing the same for over 300 years of women writers in the vast American landscape seemed impossible. But times, and technology, have changed, and Showalter recently decided to retire from Princeton University and tackle the project.

Showalter describes opposition from current feminist critics, who assert that American society is not ready for this book. But the changing political landscape in America, asserts Showalter, provides a welcome opportunity to have a strong critical look at the women writers who have been hindered in their work over the centuries. She details the castrated career of Julia Ward Howe, who published her first work in the mid 1800's under a pseudonym to avoid the wrath of her husband, a socially irreproachable man. When her husband found out, he instructed her to stop writing, threatening to divorce her, find a younger, malleable woman, and take her children away. The last he could easily have done at that time in history.

The relatively high level of recognition for women who wrote in the southern gothic subgenre is, according to Showalter, partly to do with their willingness to attach a name to themselves. She points out that when two men write about the same thing, they quickly become a 'school', and three or more become a 'generation'. Women writers have been less prone to publicity, which Showalter presents as the thing which makes history. She suggests that if women had decided to pin down a genre called late 20^th century romantic realism, rather than allowing men to attach the chick lit label, perhaps the genre might have been taken more seriously.

The sun is blinding as I leave the tent. I'm often fooled into thinking it's past sunset in the RBS Main Theatre. I pause for a drink outside the London Review of Books tent, where Showalter is signing books and fielding more questions. Overpriced; I'll have to smuggle my own wine in from now on.