Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-277) and index.
Women readers and reading in Victorian Britain and America -- Transatlantic representations of the woman reader: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), Henry James's The portrait of a lady (1881), Louisa May Alcott's Little women (1868, 1869), and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) -- Prophetic reading: Maggie Tulliver of George Eliot's The mill on the Floss (1847) -- Romance consumers: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857) and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The doctor's wife (1864) -- The case for compatibility: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814), George Eliot's Middlemarch (1872), and Mona Caird's The daughters of Danaus (1894) -- An illustrative gallery of Victorian British and American women readers: the illustrated fiction of Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Anthony Trollope -- The book as portal: depictions of the mind traveler in Lewis Carroll's Alice's adventures under ground (1864) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The yellow wall-paper" (1892) -- "What is the use of a book?" Becky Sharp as revolutionary reader in William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity fair (1848).
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"By comparing 'ideologies surrounding women and books' on both sides of the Atlantic, it offers new interpretations of canonical texts in a series of fascinating pairings of British and American texts. ... The most original aspect of the book is its examination of the woman reader as she appeared in illustrations in popular novels and the way illustration functioned as a vehicle for illuminating issues of gender.
Images of the woman reader in Victorian British and American fiction.
0813026792
American fiction-- 19th century-- History and criticism.
Books and reading in literature.
English fiction-- 19th century-- History and criticism.
Women and literature-- English-speaking countries-- History-- 19th century.
Women-- Books and reading-- English-speaking countries-- History-- 19th century.