These new essays by leading scholars explore nineteenth-century women's writing across a spectrum of genres. The book's focus is on women's role in and access to literary culture in the broadest sense, as consumers and interpreters as well as practitioners of that culture. Individual chapters consider women as journalists, editors, translators, scholars, actresses, playwrights, autobiographers, biographers, writers for children and religious writers as well as novelists and poets. The impact of women in the literary marketplace, women's role in public debate, the cultural power of women readers, women writers' construction of gender and sexuality, and the formation of a female canon are central concerns in a century which saw the emergence of a mass audience for literature. A unique chronology offers a woman-centred perspective on literary and historical events and there is a guide to further reading.
List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Chronology; Introduction Joanne Shattock; 1. The construction of the woman writer Joanne Shattock; 2. Remaking the canon Joanne Wilkes; 3. Women and the consumption of print Margaret Beetham; 4. Women writing Woman: nineteenth-century representations of gender and sexuality Lyn Pykett; 5. Feminism, journalism and public debate Barbara Caine; 6. Women's writing and the domestic sphere Elizabeth Langland; 7. Women, fiction and the market place Valerie Sanders; 8. Women poets and the challenge of genre Virginia Blain; 9. Women and the theatre Katherine Newey; 10. Women writers and self-writing Linda Peterson; 11. The professionalization of women's writing: extending the canon Judith Johnston and Hilary Fraser; 12. Women writers and religion Elisabeth Jay; 13. Women writing for children Lynne Vallone.
