Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-06484-3 - The Cambridge Companion to: Victorian Women’s Writing Edited by Linda H. Peterson Frontmatter More information the cambridge companion to victorian women’s writing The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women’s Writing brings together chapters by leading scholars to provide innovative and comprehensive coverage of Victorian women writers’ careers and literary achievements. While incorpor- ating the scholarly insights of modern feminist criticism, it also reflects new approaches to women authors that have emerged with the rise of book history; periodical studies; performance studies; postcolonial studies; and scholarship on authorship, readership, and publishing. It traces the Victorian woman writer’s career – from making her debut to working with publishers and editors to achieving literary fame – and challenges previous thinking about genres in which women contributed with success. Chapters on poetry, including a discus- sion of poetry in colonial and imperial contexts, reveal women’s engagements with each other and with male writers. Discussions on drama, life-writing, reviewing, history, travel writing, and children’s literature uncover the remark- able achievement of women in fields relatively unknown. linda h. peterson is Niel Gray, Jr. Professor of English at Yale University. She is the author of Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing (1999) and Becoming a Woman of Letters: Myths of Authorship, Facts of the Victorian Market (2009). A complete list of books in the series is at the back of the book. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-06484-3 - The Cambridge Companion to: Victorian Women’s Writing Edited by Linda H. Peterson Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-06484-3 - The Cambridge Companion to: Victorian Women’s Writing Edited by Linda H. Peterson Frontmatter More information THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO VICTORIAN WOMEN’S WRITING edited by LINDA H. PETERSON Yale University © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-06484-3 - The Cambridge Companion to: Victorian Women’s Writing Edited by Linda H. Peterson Frontmatter More information University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107659612 © Cambridge University Press 2015 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2015 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data The Cambridge Companion to Victorian women’s writing / edited by Linda H. Peterson pages cm. – (Cambridge Companions to literature) isbn 978-1-107-65961-2 (paperback) 1. English literature – Women authors – History and criticism. 2. Women and literature – Great Britain – History – 19th century. 3. English literature – 19th century – History and criticism. 4. Publishers and publishing – Great Britain – History – 19th century. I. Peterson, Linda H., editor. pr115.c36 2015 820.90928709034–dc23 2015011595 isbn 978-1-107-06484-3 Hardback isbn 978-1-107-65961-2 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-06484-3 - The Cambridge Companion to: Victorian Women’s Writing Edited by Linda H. Peterson Frontmatter More information CONTENTS List of illustrations vii Notes on contributors viii Acknowledgments xii Chronology of publications and events xiii Introduction: Victorian women’s writing and modern literary criticism 1 linda h. peterson part i victorian women writers’ careers 1 Making a debut 15 alexis easley 2 Becoming a professional writer 29 joanne shattock 3 Working with publishers 43 linda h. peterson 4 Assuming the role of editor 59 beth palmer 5 Achieving fame and canonicity 73 alison chapman part ii victorian women writers’ achievements: genres and modes 6 Poetry 89 linda k. hughes v © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-06484-3 - The Cambridge Companion to: Victorian Women’s Writing Edited by Linda H. Peterson Frontmatter More information vi contents 7 Silver-fork, industrial, and Gothic fiction 105 ella dzelzainis 8 The realist novel 119 deirdre d’albertis 9 Sensation and New Woman fiction 133 lyn pykett 10 Drama and theater 144 katherine newey 11 Life-writing 159 carol hanbery mackay 12 Travel writing 175 tamara s. wagner 13 Colonial and imperial writing 189 mary ellis gibson and jason r.rudy 14 History writing 206 deborah a. logan 15 Periodical writing 221 margaret beetham 16 Reviewing 236 joanne wilkes 17 Children’s writing 251 claudia nelson Guide to further reading 265 Index 276 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-06484-3 - The Cambridge Companion to: Victorian Women’s Writing Edited by Linda H. Peterson Frontmatter More information ILLUSTRATIONS 1 “The Fraserians,” Fraser’s Magazine 11 (January 1835), 2–3. Courtesy of the Yale University Library. 53 2 “Regina’s Maids of Honour,” Fraser’s Magazine 13 (January 1836), 80. Courtesy of the Yale University Library. 53 3 Title page, The White Wampum, by E. Pauline Johnson (London: John Lane, 1895). Courtesy of the University of Michigan Library. 201 4 Frontispiece, Sarojini Naidu, The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring (London: William Heinemann; New York: John Lane, 1912). Courtesy of the Yale University Library. 202 vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-06484-3 - The Cambridge Companion to: Victorian Women’s Writing Edited by Linda H. Peterson Frontmatter More information NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS margaret beetham publishes on nineteenth-century print culture, particularly women’s magazines and Lancashire dialect publications; on theorizing the period- ical; and on popular reading. Her scholarship includes A Magazine of her Own? Domesticity and Desire in the Woman’s Magazine, 1800–1914 (1996), The Victorian Woman’s Magazine: An Anthology (2001) with Kay Boardman, and numerous articles and chapters in books. She is an associate editor of the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism (2009). alison chapman is an associate professor at the University of Victoria, Canada. She is the author of The Afterlife of Christina Rossetti, coauthor of A Rossetti Family Chronology, and editor or coeditor of several collections including A Companion to Victorian Poetry and Victorian Women Poets. A new monograph, Networking the Nation: British and American Women Poets and Italy, 1840– 1870, is forthcoming. She continues to work on the digital project A Database of Victorian Periodical Poetry (http://web.uvic.ca/~vicpoet/database-of-victorian-per iodical-poetry/). deirdre d’albertis is a professor of English at Bard College and the author of Dissembling Fictions: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Social Text, as well as essays on Margaret Oliphant, Charlotte Brontë, Eliza Lynn Linton, Hannah Cullwick, and Mary Howitt among others. Her current research is focused on transnational feminist networks and social reform in nineteenth-century Britain, America, and Europe. ella dzelzainis is a lecturer in nineteenth-century literature at Newcastle University. Her research is interdisciplinary, located in the intersection between literature, feminist history, and economic history in the long nineteenth century. Recently, her work on manners and commerce has taken a transatlantic turn, producing an essay collection (coedited with Ruth Livesey), The American Experiment and the Idea of Democracy in British Culture, 1776–1914 (2013), that includes her own piece on “Dickens, Democracy and Spit.” viii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-06484-3 - The Cambridge Companion to: Victorian Women’s Writing Edited by Linda H. Peterson Frontmatter More information notes on contributors ix alexis easley is a professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media (2004) and Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship (2011). Her most recent publications appeared in three 2012 essay collections, Women Writers and the Artifacts of Celebrity, Women in Journalism at the Fin de Siècle, and Centenary Essays on W. T. Stead. She is coediting the Ashgate Companion to Nineteenth-Century Periodicals and Newspapers (with John Morton and Andrew King) and serves as the editor of Victorian Periodicals Review. mary ellis gibson