Educating the proper woman reader
Subtitle: Victorian family literary magazines and the cultural health of the nation
By: Jennifer Phegley.
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Columbus
Language: eng
Number of pages: 233
Subjects: English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Middle class women -- Books and reading -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 19th century.; Women and literature -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 19th century.; Periodicals -- Publishing -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Periodicals -- Publishing -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Literature publishing -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Didactic literature, English -- History and criticism.; Women in literature.
Description: "While many scholars have explored the ways nineteenth-century critics expressed their anxiety about the dangers of women's unregulated and implicitly uncritical reading practices, which were believed to threaten the sanctity of the home and the cultural status of the nation, Phegley argues that family literary magazines revolutionized the position of women as consumers of print by characterizing them as educated readers and able critics. Her analysis of images of influential women readers (in Harper's), intellectual women readers (in The Cornhill), independent women readers (in Belgravia), and proto-feminist women readers/critics (in Victoria) indicates that women played a significant role in determining the boundaries of literary culture within these magazines. She argues that these publications supported women's reading choices, inviting them to define literary culture rather than to consume it passively." "Not only does this book revise our understanding of nineteenth-century attitudes toward women readers, but is also takes a fresh look at the transatlantic context of literary production. Further, Phegley demonstrates the role these publications played in improving cultural literacy among women of the middle classes as well as the interplay between fiction and essays of the time by writers such as Mary Braddon, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, G. H. Lewes, Harriet Martineau, Margaret Oliphant, George Sala, William Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-225) and index.
Table of contents: title: The scene of women's reading : mid-nineteenth century culture, professional critics, and family literary magazines; title: Piracy and the patriotic woman reader : making British literature American in Harper's new monthly magazine, 1850-1855; title: The education and professionalization of the woman reader : consolidating middleclass power in the Cornhill magazine, 1860-1864; title: (Im)proper reading for women : Belgravia magazine and the defense of the sensation novel, 1866-1871; title: Victoria's secret : the woman's movement from reader to writer/critic, 1863-1868.