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“The Most Extraordinary Novel of Modern Times”: Collaborative Fiction in The Gentlewoman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2022

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Abstract

This article investigates two collaborative (and little-known) novels published in the early 1890s periodical The Gentlewoman. The collaborations turn on, and center, a heroine whose reputation, choices, and actions stand as the locus of investigation; the business of interpreting a woman's character brings multiple writers, from many walks of life, together in a shared enterprise shaped by ongoing disagreement, for how to interpret the heroine evolves week by week. The two texts disrupt not only their own reading of their heroine but stage, through their very form, that any fixed, stable, or unitary reading of womanhood is impossible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , Winter 2022 , pp. 669 - 692
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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