Hilary Fraser is Geoffrey Tillotson chair in Nineteenth-century studies in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of Beauty and Belief: Aesthetics and Religion in Victorian Literature (Cambridge, 1986), The Victorians and Renaissance Italy (1992) and English Prose of the 19th Century (with Daniel Brown, 1997). Judith Johnston teaches in English, Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia. She is editor with Margaret Harris of The Journals of George Eliot (1998) and author of Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters (1997). Stephanie Green is Lecturer for the University Extension Program at the University of Western Australia and Marketing and Promotions Manager of Fremantle Arts Centre Press. She has published widely on topics in nineteenth-century literature.

'This is a sensitive study that engages with the most challenging aspects of popular writing … fascinating chapters …' The Times Literary Supplement

• List of plates; Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The writing subject; 2. The gendered reader; 3. Editorship and gender; 4. Gender and the 'Politics of Home'; 5. Gender and cultural imperialism; 6. Feminism and the press; 7. Gender, commodity and the late nineteenth-century periodical; Conclusion; Notes; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.