This volume charts the rise of professional women writers across diverse fields of intellectual enquiry and through different modes of writing in the period immediately before and during the reign of Queen Victoria. It demonstrates how, between 1830 and 1880, the woman writer became an agent of cultural formation and contestation, appealing to and enabling the growth of female readership while issuing a challenge to the authority of male writers and critics. Of especial importance were changing definitions of marriage, family and nation, of class, and of morality as well as new conceptions of sexuality and gender, and of sympathy and sensation. The result is a richly textured account of a radical and complex process of feminization whereby formal innovations in the different modes of writing by women became central to the aesthetic, social, and political formation of British culture and society in the nineteenth century.

Assesses the distinctive contributions of women writers to various dimensions of literary and social life in the period from 1830 to 1880 Offers a new perspective on gender identity, professionalization, print culture, and place in women's writing between 1830 and 1880 Considers how women writers worked within and across genres in order to give distinctive voice to the challenges of a rapidly industrializing society and the opportunities for taking the lead in shaping culture, especially modern concepts of identity

Autorentext

Lucy Hartley is Professor of English at the University of Michigan, USA. She is the author of two books, Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture (2001) and Democratising Beauty in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Art and the Politics of Public Life (2017), as well as numerous articles on the political and aesthetic dimensions of nineteenth-century British culture.

Inhalt

1. Introduction. The 'business' of writing women - Lucy Hartley.- 2. The Feminisation of Literary Culture - Joanne Shattock.- 3. Authorship, Gender, and the Periodical Press - Alexis Easley.- 4. The Professional Woman Writer - Linda K. Hughes.- 5. Mapping the Nation: Scotland and Britain - Suzanne Gilbert.- 6. Representing Ireland - Margaret Kelleher.- 7. Runaway Discourse: Women Write Slavery, Race, and Empire - Cora Kaplan.- 8. Women Writers and the Provincial Novel - Josephine McDonagh.- 9. Library Lives of Women -Susan David Bernstein.- 10. Travel Writing - Ella Dzelzainis.- 11. Religious Genres - Julie Melnyk.- 12. Women Playwrights and the London Stage - Sharon Aronofsky Weltman.- 13. Life Writing - Valerie Sanders.- 14. Scientific and Medical Genres - Claire Brock.- 15. Creativity - Alison Chapman.- 16. Sensation, Art, and Capital - Lucy Hartley.- 17. Writing Across the Class Divide - Florence S. Boos.- 18. Friendship and Intimacy - Jill Rappoport.- 19. Sympathy - Carolyn Burdett.