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Author Palmer, Beth, 1982-

Title Women's authorship and editorship in Victorian culture : sensational strategies / Beth Palmer
Published Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2011

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  823.809287 P1734/W  AVAILABLE
Description 206 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Series Oxford English monographs
Oxford English monographs.
Contents A different context for sensation : serialization, celebrity culture, and the feminist press -- Mary Elizabeth Braddon's "strong measures" -- Ellen Wood, religious feeling, and sensation -- Florence Marryat on page and on stage -- The new woman, the legacies of sensation, and the press of the 1890s
Summary This book considers the ways in which women writers used the powerful positions of author and editor to perform conventions of gender and genre in the Victorian period. It examines Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ellen Wood, and Florence Marryat's magazines (Belgravia, Argosy, and London Society respectively) alongside their sensation fiction to explore the mutually influential strategies of authorship and editorship. The relationship between sensation's success as a popular fiction genre and its serialisation in the periodical press was not just reciprocal but also self-conscious and performative. Publishing sensation in Victorian magazines offered women writers a set of discursive strategies that they could transfer onto other cultural discourses and performances. With these strategies they could explore, enact, and re-work contemporary notions of female agency and autonomy, as well as negotiate contemporary criticism. Combining authorship and editorship gave these middle-class women exceptional control over the shaping of fiction, its production, and its dissemination. By paying attention to the ways in which the sensation genre is rooted in the press network this book offers a new, broader context for the phenomenal success of works like Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret and Ellen Wood's East Lynne. The book reaches back to the mid-nineteenth century to explore the press conditions initiated by figures like Charles Dickens and Mrs Beeton that facilitated the later success of these sensation writers. By looking forwards to the New Woman writers of the 1890s the book draws conclusions regarding the legacies of sensational author-editorship in the Victorian press and beyond
Notes Formerly CIP. Uk
Bibliography Bibliography: pages [187]-202. - Includes index
Subject Marryat, Florence, 1833-1899 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth), 1835-1915 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Wood, Henry, Mrs., 1814-1887 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- History and criticism.
Popular literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.
Periodicals -- Publishing -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
Women and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
LC no. 2011921151
ISBN 9780199599110 hardback
0199599114 hardback