A01=Katie R. Peel
Author_Katie R. Peel
Bronte
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
Category=JBSF1
Dickens
empathy
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
forthcoming
Gaskell
kept woman
mistress
narrative justice
narratology
queer
reparative reading
sex work
wives
Product details
- ISBN 9781526198211
- Weight: 277g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 23 Jun 2026
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2025
Readers and Mistresses: Kept Women in Victorian Literature identifies kept mistresses in British Victorian narrative and offers ways to understand their experiences. The author discusses kept women characters in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and Ruth, Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, and examines the methods their authors use to encourage reader empathy. This book also usefully demonstrates how to identify kept women when they are less visible in texts, including in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Dickens' Hard Times and Dombey and Son, and George Gissing's The Odd Women.
Katie R. Peel is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington
