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The Woman Reader 1837-1914

Kate Flint author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:16th Nov '95

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The Woman Reader 1837-1914 cover

Why was the topic of women and reading so controversial for the Victorians and Edwardians? What was it assumed that women read, and what advice was given about where, when, and how to read? Kate Flint examines texts ranging from fiction, painting, and poetry, through medical and psychoanalytic works, advice manuals and periodicals, to autobiographies and contemporary social research, in her detailed and highly praised study of this central cultural debate in nineteenth-century society. Engaging also in recent feminist theory, she explores the manipulation of the figure of the woman reader in well-known works like Charlotte Bronte's Shirley and Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out, in sensation novels and New Woman fiction, and in stories found in series such as The Princess's Novelettes. This is supported by evidence from actual readers - working women, as well as the privileged - as to how they understood their own highly varied reading experiences. This ground-breaking work provides an invaluable source for scholars and students of nineteenth-century culture, and will be essential reading for all interested in current critical debates on women and reading.

..research is superb, and most readers, of either sex, will find her books at once fascinating and infuriating * Financial Times *
firm historical perspective combined with vivid, bristling detail..valuable as well as interesting..Flint..is the first person to analyse the whole spectrum of debate..she constantly overturns imposed stereotypes..sure grasp of theory lets her handle the mass of material with assurance.. Independent on Sunday
..addresses the Victorian essentialism, largely unchallenged to the present day..many felicitous and arresting things in The Woman Reader..depth and detail of Flint's exposition constantly reveal new information and new ways of looking at the familiar ..scrupulously examines the persistent attempts to establish a regulative canon of books for girls. * T.L.S. *
In and among the rich tapestry of references Flint weaves her own text..exhaustive bibliography. * Clarke, Choice, Mar '94 *
..the abundance of information made available in The Woman Reader is beyond praise..with such riches the problem of organizing for the reader's comfort and convenience is almost insurmountable..Some books are to be savored, some mastered, some mined. This one is to be mined. It is encyclopedic. Ruth Z. Temple, CUNY, English Lit. in Transition 1880-1920, Volume 28: 2 1995 * YES 26, 1996 *
Kate Flint is a competent researcher * Victorian Studies *
The book's great strength is its extensive trawling of sources ... sorted, sifted, assessed, and displayed with precision and skill, the specimens collectively support, a persuasive taxonomy of female reading ... this book is a valuable contribution to feminist understanding of the woman reader. * Clare Brant, King's College, London, RES New Series, Vol. XLVII, No. 186 (1996) *
Kate Flint's account of the woman reader during the Victorian and Edwardian periods is brimming over with diverting and suggestive extracts ... This is an incredibly learned and well-researched study of the woman reader in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and Flint's talent is a thoroughly historical one. The wealth of source material and sheer weight of the research undertaken means that Flint's study is expository, explanatory and scholarly rather than polemical. It will certainly be the standard book on the subject for many years to come, and should be regarded as essential reading for any student of the Victorian 'Woman Question'. * Sally Ledger, Women: A Cultural Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, '96 *
exhaustive and engrossing study * Eileen Gillooly, Common Knowledge *
this is a usefully old-fashioned study, a rich mishmash of specific incidents, quotations, anecdotes, and other straws in the historical wind ... this is a very worthwhile book that will provide valuable cultural background not only for literary critics, but also for more hardheaded book historians * Patrick Scott, Bibliographical Society of America 90:3 (September 1996) *

  • Winner of Rose Mary Crawshay Prize 1996

ISBN: 9780198121855

Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 22mm

Weight: 568g

378 pages