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Becoming a Woman of Letters analyzes the ways in which women authors negotiated the material conditions of authorship and, at the same time, constructed myths of their literary work to elevate the status of their profession and their place in it. Drawing on archives in the US and UK, the chapters trace the careers of women as they entered the literary profession, negotiated the demands of editors, publishers, and reviewers, and achieved distinction as "women of letters"--a honorific term that the Victorians invented.
"Becoming a Woman of Letters makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the nineteenth-century literary marketplace and of how women located themselves within the emerging profession of authorship. Elegant and engagingly written, this book will appeal to readers with an interest in the history of authorship, in the periodical press, and in women's writing."
--Hilary Fraser, Birbeck College, University of London
"Written in transparently lucid prose, this book offers a deeply informed, evenhanded assessment of the several models of female authorship that circulated from the 1830s to the 1890s. The book deftly shows how Victorian myths of female authorship both emerged and diverged from the professional biographies of these women of letters."
--Rosemarie Bodenheimer, Boston College
"Peterson's study is not simply a fascinating
contribution to the nineteenth-century history of authorship, it is
also an interesting example of the uses of the biographical and
autobiographical writings of literary figures by their creators or by
other writers for the purposes of self-mythologization or the creation
of gendered myths of authorship. . . . This is very much a contribution
to the bigger picture on the nineteenth-century history of authorship,
and a model for further scholarship in this area." --Lyn Pykett, Biography