Aristocratic Women and the Literary Nation, 1832-1867 »

MUIREANN O'CINNEIDE is a Lecturer in English at St. Peter's College at University of Oxford. Her research centers on women's writing, politics, and empire, particularly travel literature.

Aristocratic women flourished in the Victorian literary world, their combination of class privilege and gendered exclusion generating distinctively socialized modes of participation in cultural and political activity. Their writing offers an important trope through which to consider the nature of political, private and public spheres. This book is an examination of the literary, social, and political significance of the lives and writings of aristocratic women in the mid-Victorian period.

Introduction 1

Pt. I Class and Authorship

1 Aristocratic Lives: Life-Writing, Class and Authority 23

2 Dilettantes and Dandies: Authorship and the Silver Fork Novel 46

3 Silly Novels and Lady Novelists: Inside the Literary Marketplace 63

Pt. II Writing the Nation State

4 Wrongs Make Rebels: Polemical Voices 93

5 The Spectacle of Fiction: Self, Society and the Novel 129

6 Affairs of State: Aristocratic Women and the Politics of Influence 153

Conclusion: 1867 and Beyond 180

Notes 184

Works Cited 211

Index 231