Disease, Desire, and the Body in Victorian Women's Popular Novels: (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Cultu)

Series: Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Cultu

Pamela Gilbert argues that popular fiction in mid-Victorian Britain was regarded as both feminine and diseased. She discusses work by three popular women novelists of the time: M. E. Braddon, Rhoda Broughton and "Ouida". Early and later novels of each writer are interpreted in the context of their reception, showing that attitudes toward fiction drew on Victorian beliefs about health, nationality,