About the Book
How did women enter the literary profession, meet the demands of editors, publishers, booksellers, and reviewers, and achieve distinction as "women of letters"--a honorific status that the Victorians valued?
Becoming a Woman of Letters analyzes how women authors negotiated the material conditions of authorship and, at the same time, constructed myths and models of their literary work to elevate the status of their profession and their place in it.
Using letters, contracts, and other evidence from archives in the US and UK, the case studies in this book trace the careers of six 19th-century women writers: some, like Harriet Martineau, adopted the practices of her male counterparts and wrote for periodicals before producing a best-seller and moving to London as a professional author. Others, like Mary Howitt and Alice Meynell, began in literary partnerships with their husbands while later pursuing independent careers. Still others, like Charlotte Bronte and her successors Charlotte Riddell and Mary Cholmondeley, wrote from obscure parsonages or isolated villages, hoping for a meteoric rise to fame with a novel like Jane Eyre or its modern equivalent. The chapters include examples of success and failure—of critical esteem leading to financial reward and secure reputation, as well as of initial success failing to sustain a career. Taken together, they trace the flowering of literary professionalism in the 19th century, with the burgeoning of print culture and the opening of new genres for women authors: the critical essay, the literary review, the periodical column, the newspaper “leader,” the travelogue, the biographical portrait and historical sketch, the nature essay, the belletristic essay.
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Introduction.