The Improper Feminine

The women’s sensation novel of the 1860s and the New Woman writing of the 1890s were among the chief literary sensations of their day. They were widely read, heatedly discussed in the newspaper and periodical press, imitated, parodied and, in some cases, adapted for the stage. In short, they were part of the general cultural currency of the second half of the nineteenth century. Despite (or perhaps because of) this fact, the novels and stories at the centre of this study are, on the whole, works which had disappeared from view, or had been relegated to the status of minor historical curiosities, until their rediscovery in the wake of the second-wave feminism of the 1970s.