Full Description
This five-volume series, British Women's Writing From Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940, historicallycontextualizes and traces developments in women's fiction from 1840 to 1940. Critically assessingboth canonical and lesser-known British women's writing decade by decade, it redefines the landscapeof women's authorship across a century of dynamic social and cultural change. With each ofits volumes devoted to two decades, the series is wide in scope but historically sharply defined.
Volume 2: 1860s and 1870s continues the series by historically and culturally contextualizing Victorianwomen's writing distinctly within the 1860s and 1870s. Covering a range of fictional approaches,including short stories, religiously inflected novels, and comic writing the volume's 16 original essaysconsider such developments as the sensation craze, the impact of new technologies, and the careeropportunities opening for women. Centrally, it reassesses key nineteenth-century female authors inthe context in which they first published while also recovering neglected women writers who helpedto shape the literary landscape of the 1860s and 1870s.
Contents
1.Introduction; Adrienne E. Gavin and Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton.- 2. A Decade of Experiment: George Eliot in the 1860s; Margaret Harris.- 3. 'Duck him!': Private Feelings, Public Interests, and Ellen Wood's East Lynne; Tara MacDonald.- 4. [Tr]ains of Circumstantial Evidence: Railway 'Monomania' and Investigations of Gender in Lady Audley's Secret; Andrew F. Humphries.- 5. 'There is great need for forgiveness in this world': The Call for Reconciliation in Elizabeth Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers and A Dark Night's Work; Elizabeth Ludlow.- 6. 'The plain duties which are set before me': Charity, Agency, and Women's Work in the 1860s; Kristine Moruzi.- 7.'[S]mothered under rose-leaves': Violent Sensation and the Location of the Feminine in Eliza Lynn Linton's Sowing the Wind; Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton.- 8. 'Fleshly Inclinations': The Nature of Female Desire in Rhoda Broughton's Early Fiction; Tamar Heller.- 9. Crumbs from the Table: Matilda Betham-Edwards' Comic Writing in Punch; Clare Horrocks and Nickianne Moody.- 10. Transcending Prudence: Charlotte Riddell's 'City Women'; Silvana Colella.- 11. '[M]ute orations, mute rhapsodies, mute discussions': Silence in George Eliot's Last Decade; Fionnuala Dillane.- 12.'His eyes commanded me to come to him': Desire and Mesmerism in Rhoda Broughton's 'The Man with the Nose'; Melissa Purdue.- 13. '[E]mphatically un-literary and middle-classʼ: Undressing Middle-Class Anxieties in Ellen Wood's Johnny Ludlow Stories; Alyson Hunt.- 14. 'Sinecures which could be held by girls': Margaret Oliphant and Women's Labour; Danielle Charette.- 15. 'More like a woman stuck into boy's clothes': Transcendent Femininity in Florence Marryat'sHer Father's Name; Catherine Pope.- 16. 'I am writing the life of a horse': Anna Sewell's Black Beauty in the 1870s; Adrienne E. Gavin.- 17. Forging a New Path: Fraud and White-Collar Crime in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 1870s Fiction; Janine Hatter.
