Title: Silenced sextet
First published: 1992
Description: The Canadian publishing industry burgeoned during the late nineteenth century and Canadian poets and novelists began to gain international recognition. Twentieth-century literary scholars, however, have tended to focus on just a few of the writers of this vital expansive period. Many other writers with strong critical reputations and/or popular followings - a good proportion of whom were women - have been virtually lost to us.

Carrie MacMillan, Lorraine McMullen, and Elizabeth Waterston have uncovered information about the lives and works of six such writers. Rosanna Leprohon, May Agnes Fleming, Margaret Murray Robertson, Susan Frances Harrison, Margaret Marshall Saunders, and Joanna E. Wood were once-popular novelists who are now for the most part ignored, with virtually all of their works out of print. These six writers deserve modern recognition not only for their literary accomplishments but also for what they reveal, through their work and their lives, about the condition of the woman writer in nineteenth-century Canada.

The writings of these six women reflect their varied backgrounds and their different experiences of life in the late nineteenth century. A biographical profile of each author, set in the contemporary social context, is provided, as well as an analysis of career development, emphasizing publishing history and critical response. As each case history unfolds, the broader picture emerges of an era when many ideas of personal and public life were changing.
Subjects: Canadian fiction, History and criticism, Women authors, Women and literature, History, General & Literary Fiction, Literary studies: general, Novels, other prose & writers: 19th century, Women's studies, Women As Authors (English Literature), English Canadian Novel And Short Story, Literature - Classics / Criticism, American English, English, Literary Criticism, Canada, Canadian, 19th century, Women, canada, Canadian literature, Women authors, Canadian (English), Biography, Canadian Women authors
Places: Canada
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PR9197.33.W65 M33 1993