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This collection of essays focuses attention on a number of Victorian women writers popular in their own time but forgotten or neglected by literary history, from Margaret Oliphant and Charlotte Yonge to Mary Ward, Marie Corelli, "Ouida" and E. Nesbit. Particular emphasis is given to writings concerned with "the woman question." Discussions of marriage, matriarchy and divorce, satire, suffragette writing, writing for children, and links between literature and art illuminate the complex cultural and literary roles, and the engaging contributions, of Victorian women writers.
List of contents
1. Responding to the woman question: re-reading non-canonical Victorian women novelists Nicola Diane Thompson; 2. Marriage and the anti-feminist woman novelist Valerie Sanders; 3. Breaking apart: the early Victorian divorce novel Anne Humpherys; 4. Phantasies of matriarchy in Victorian children's literature by non-canonical woman writers Alison Chapman; 5. Gendered observations: Harriet Martineau and the woman question Alexis Easley; 6. Maximising Oliphant: begging the question and the politics of satire Monica F. Cohen; 7. 'Ploughing in all directions': literary women of the 1850s and Charlotte Mary Yonge's Dynevor Terrace June Sturrock; 8. Portraits of the artist as a young woman: representations of the female artist in the women's writing of the 1890s Lyn Pykett; 9. Lady in green with novel: the economics of painting in women's writing Dennis Denisoff; 10. Ouida and the other new woman Pamela K. Gilbert; 11. Organizing women: new woman writers, new woman readers, and suffrage feminism Ann Ardis; 12. Shot out of the canon: Mary Ward and the claims of conflicting feminism Beth Sutton-Ramspeck; 13. Brave girls and strategic displacements: E. Nesbit and the woman question Amelia A. Rutledge; 14. 'An 'old-fashioned' young woman': Marie Corelli and the new woman Annette R. Federico.
Summary
This book was first published in 1999. This collection of essays by leading scholars from Britain, the USA and Canada opens up the limited landscape of Victorian novels by focusing attention on some of the women writers popular in their own time but forgotten or neglected by literary history.
