Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign: A Book of Appreciations

Published in 1897 as a tribute to the longest reign in British history, this collection assembles essays by prominent Victorian women writers celebrating their literary predecessors. Margaret Oliphant, herself a towering figure of the era, opens the volume with her incisive appreciation of the Brontë sisters, examining how Charlotte's fierce protagonists broke through the thick ceiling of Victorian male authorship. Other contributions include Edna Lyall on Mrs. Gaskell, Mrs. Lynn Linton on George Eliot, and tributes to Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Dinah Mulock Craik, and Charlotte M. Yonge. What distinguishes this volume is its double perspective: women writers assessing women writers, from within the tradition they helped create. The publishers' note explicitly frames the project as弥补 the male-dominated literary canon, restricting its subjects to deceased novelists whose complete literary legacies could finally be assessed. This is Victorian literary feminism in action: a act of canon-formation undertaken by the very women writers who had fought for their own place in letters.