New Media and the Rise of the Popular Woman Writer, 1832–1860
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Explores the link between revolutionary change in the Victorian world of print and women’s entry into the field of mass-market publishing
This book highlights the integral relationship between the rise of the popular woman writer and the expansion and diversification of newspaper, book and periodical print media during a period of revolutionary change, 1832–1860. It includes discussion of canonical women writers such as Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, as well as lesser-known figures such as Eliza Cook and Frances Brown. It also examines the ways women readers actively responded to a robust popular print culture by creating scrapbooks and engaging in forms of celebrity worship. Easley analyses the ways Victorian women’s participation in popular print culture anticipates our own engagement with new media in the twenty-first century.
Alexis Easley is Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media, 1830–70 (2004) and Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850–1914 (2011). She has also co-edited four books, most recently Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s–1900s, with Clare Gill and Beth Rodgers (2019). Her most recent book publication is New Media and the Rise of the Popular Woman Writer, 1832–60 (2021). This project was a 2019 recipient of the Linda H. Peterson Prize awarded by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. She is currently at work on a biography of Eliza Cook.