In Sex and Style, Elizabeth Scott-Baumann argues that the language of poetry was always gendered, in ways that devalued women poets and feminine style; and that women, writing despite - and against - this sexist rhetoric, were important theorists of literature. Examining a wealth of critical writings by women, many of them newly found in prefaces and other paratextual works, Scott-Baumann shows that the history of style is also a history of exclusion and inclusion.