The Cambridge History of Victorian Women's Writing

Victorian women's writing was a global project, offering platforms of expression to authors of wildly different perspectives, cultures, and life experiences. While conventional accounts of Victorian women's writing emphasize modest domestic ideals, this volume places that familiar narrative in conversation with voices that tell very different stories, including those that challenge, reject, reform, subvert, and sometimes reinforce received assumptions about what Victorian women thought, did, and wrote. Engaging sources from the 1830s to the dawn of the Great War in 1914 and beyond, this multi-authored history emphasizes the differences and the connections – both formal and thematic –linking those international, interdisciplinary, and transgeneric voices. Gathering cutting-edge contributions by scholars from across a rich variety of disciplinary perspectives, this History redefines what Victorian women's writing made possible in the modern world.