Women Writers and the Artifacts of Celebrity in the Long Nineteenth Century

Ann R. Hawkins is Professor of Bibliography in the Department of English at Texas Tech University, and Maura Ives is Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University, USA.

Contents: Preface; Introduction: women writers and the artifacts of celebrity, Maura Ives; Celebrity and anonymity in the Monthly Review's notices of 19th-century novels, Stephanie Eckroth; 'Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature can be': the construction of Jane Austen's public image, 1817-1917, Katie Halsey; The portrait, the beauty, and the book: celebrity and the Countess of Blessington, Ann R. Hawkins; 'A place among its more successful sisters': Louisa May Alcott's wayward Moods, Catherine S. Blackwell; 'The summit of an author's fame': Victorian women writers and the Birthday Book, Maura Ives; 'Almost idolatrous love': Caroline Dall, Sarah Knowles Bolton, Mary C. Crawford and the case of Elizabeth Whitman, Jennifer Harris; Women writers and celebrity news at the fin de siècle, Alexis Easley; 'A characteristic product of the present era': gender and celebrity in Helen C. Black's Notable Women Authors of the Day (1893), Troy J. Bassett; Presenting Alice Meynell: the book, the photograph, and the calendar, Linda H. Peterson; Motherhood, authorship, and rivalry: sons' memoirs of the lives of Ellen Price Wood and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Jennifer Phegley; Commodifying the self: portraits of the artist in the novels of Marie Corelli, Lizzie White; Pauline Johnson and celebrity in Canada: 'the most unique fixture in the literary world of today', Carole Gerson; Works cited; Index.