Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question

by Nicola Diane Thompson

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107404151
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2012
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture , #21
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.63(d)

Table 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.

Editorial Reviews

"...the essays in this book, contributed by a mix of established scholars and capable newcomers, are fresh, reflect sensitive reading, and are for the most part well written..." Victorian Periodicals Review

"...[the book] is greater than the sum of its parts. This achievement stems from the editor's skill in conceiving and executing her subject...The collection's contributors have done a fine job of unmasking the cultural camouflage in which these writers may have disguised their concerns, and of celebrating the multivocality they achieved with one another and even within their own works." Victorian Studies

From the Publisher