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

Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary), 1823-1901Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
380K words
Chapters
39

Tags

English Originals Literary Appreciation Group BiographyHumanistic CareSocial ObservationVictorian EraFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign: A Book of Appreciations by Alexander et al.Author: Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary), 1823-1901,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 6, 2011

Editor's review

This book is a collection of appreciative essays on women novelists of Queen Victoria's reign, written by Charlotte M. Yonge and others, and belongs to the tradition of British literary criticism. Its value lies not in offering a complete textbook history of the novel but in presenting, through the eyes of contemporary or near-contemporary critics, appreciation and judgment of several women novelists and their works, helping readers understand how nineteenth-century British women's writing was read and evaluated. The book bears the clear critical tastes of its time and is suitable as supplementary material for courses in literary history, as well as for readers who have some initial acquaintance with Victorian women's literature and wish to learn more about the critical discourse of the period. It should be read as "critical source material" rather than as author biography or a guide to the works; readers should note the critics' positions and tastes and need not treat their judgments as final. The electronic edition is convenient for searching names of authors and works and is well suited to note-taking and comparative reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and introduction to understand the subjects and critical framework, then choose chapters on authors you already know.
  2. Read alongside the original works: before reading an essay, review the plot of one representative novel by that author.
  3. Keep a notebook to record the critics' judgments and wording, distinguishing source value from personal preference.
  4. If used for a course, pair it with a modern literary history textbook to compare how evaluations have changed over more than a century.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39

FAQ

Is this book an anthology of works by Victorian women novelists? No. It is a collection of critical essays offering appreciation and commentary on several women novelists of Queen Victoria's reign, not excerpts from the novels themselves. What readers encounter are critics' judgments on authors and works, so it is better read as critical source material than used as an anthology of literary works.
Can someone without a background in English literature read this book? Yes, but it will be demanding. The authors and works discussed require some background knowledge, and the critical discourse reflects nineteenth-century critical habits. It is advisable to first gain an overview of Victorian fiction or to read alongside a literary history textbook; if you simply want an easy introduction to the authors' stories, this is not an ideal starting point.
What kind of reading does the electronic edition suit? The electronic edition is convenient for searching names of authors, titles, and keywords, and is well suited to excerpting and comparative reading. It is best read chapter by chapter by author, concentrating on one or two subjects at a time and noting the critics' core judgments as you go, so that you do not finish with only a vague impression.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary), 1823-1901 Author

Charlotte M. Yonge (1823–1901) was a prolific nineteenth-century British novelist and writer of children's literature, with 65 works held in this collection. Public information is limited, but her representative works reveal the range of her writing: family novels such as The Heir of Redclyffe and The Daisy Chain centre on everyday life and moral growth; A Book of Golden Deeds and The Little Duke, aimed at young readers, recount historical stories and heroic character; she also wrote a life of John Coleridge Patteson, missionary bishop of the Melanesian Islands. Her works generally deal with family, faith, duty and history in a gentle, realistic style, and were influential among Victorian readers, with many long surviving as reading for young people.