Victorian Publishing and Mrs. Gaskell's Work

by Hughes, Linda K.; Lund, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780813918754
• ISBN10: 0813918758
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr

Summary

For much of her own century, Elizabeth Gaskell was recognized as a voice of Victorian conventione--the loyal wife, good mother, and respected writere--a reputation that led to her steady decline in the view of twentieth-century literary critics. Recent scholars, however, have begun to recognize that Mrs. Gaskell's high standing in Victorian society allowed her to effect change in conventional ideology. Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund focus this reevaluation on issues pertaining to the Victorian literary marketplace.Victorian Publishing and Mrs. Gaskell's Work portrays an elusive and self-aware writer whose refusal to grant authority to a single perspective even while she recirculated the fundamental assumptions and debates of her era enabled her simultaneously to fulfill and deflect the expectations of the literary marketplace. While she wrote for money, producing periodical fiction, major novels, and nonfiction, Mrs. Gaskell was able to maintain a tone of warmth and empathy that allowed her to imagine multiple social and epistemological alternatives. Writing from within the established rubrics of gender, narrative, and publication format, she nevertheless performed important cultural work.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Abbreviations	ix
Introduction: Virgin Spaces in Victorian Forms	1	(10)
Standing in the Cornhill---Authorial Voice in Periodical Context: Wives and Daughters	11	(24)
Narrative Authority: Mary Barton and Sylvia's Lovers	35	(33)
Left Documents and Illegitimate Children: ``Lizzie Leigh,'' Cranford, and Ruth	68	(28)
Textual/Sexual Pleasure and Serial Publication: North and South	96	(28)
Engendered Lives: Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte	124	(41)
Epilogue: ``Cousin Phillis'' and the Construction of ``Mrs. Gaskell''	157	(8)
Notes	165	(22)
Bibliography	187	(8)
Index	195