Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change - Hardcover

Tuchman, Gaye

3.5

8 ratings by Goodreads

9780300043167: Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300043163 ISBN 13: 9780300043167

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1989

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Looks at how women novelists were supplanted by men once the critical and financial rewards became greater, and examines the archives of a top London publisher

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Gaye Tuchman is Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, USA

From Publishers Weekly:

Before 1840, most English novelists were women, and the writing of novels generally conferred a lowly status. But by 1900, "men of letters" hailed the novel as a great art form, and the majority of successful novelists were men. How male writers invaded and took over this white-collar occupation is the phenomenon investigated in this bombshell of a book, a delightful synthesis that cuts across women's studies, sociology and literary history. Sociologist Tuchman of Queens College in N.Y., and City University of New York, aided by her research assistant Fortin, now deceased, portrays Victorian publishers and editors as culture brokers protecting their own class interests by relegating women writers to "popular" fictional entertainments with broad appeal, while male "high-culture" novelists took the high road of ideas and purposive action. Victorian critics reinforced these notions with a double standard: women, they claimed, had a natural bent for artless writing and sharp-eyed observation of the social scene, while fiction by men was said to be more philosophic, original, self-reflective and difficult. As a result, English women novelists in the late 19th century were writing more and moreyet rewarded less and less.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.