The Woman Reader, 1837-1914 (Clarendon Paperbacks)

This book is an original and fascinating look at the topos of the woman reader and its functioning in cultural debate between the accession of Queen Victoria and the First World War. The issue of women and reading--what they should read; what they should be protected from; how, what, and when they should read--was the focus of lively discussion in the nineteenth century in a wide range of media. Flint uses recent feminist analyses of how women read as a context for her detailed and readable study of these debates, exploring in a variety of texts--from magazines like Woman's World and My Lady's Novelette to works of literature like Jane Eyre and The Portrait of a Lady--the range of stereotypes and directives addressed to women readers, and their influence on the writing of fiction. She also looks at how women readers of all classes understood their own reading experiences.