Gatekeeping: Publishers' Readers, Gender, and the Literature of the 1890s.

Victorian publishers widely relied on readers to evaluate manuscripts. These gatekeepers played a central role in circumscribing the literary field and in shaping literary history. Drawing on extensive archival work, this essay examines the ways in which the readers for the publisher John Lane respo...

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Publicado en:Victorian Studies Vol. 67; no. 4; pp. 537 - 559
Autor principal: Murray, Alex
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Indiana University Press Summer2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Gatekeeping: Publishers' Readers, Gender, and the Literature of the 1890s.
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        au: Murray, Alex
        affil: Queen's University Belfast
      su:
        History of publishing
        Gender studies
        Literature
        Censorship
        Women authors
        Literary criticism
        Victorian Period, Great Britain, 1837-1901
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          History of publishing
          Gender studies
          Literature
          Censorship
          Women authors
          Literary criticism
          Victorian Period, Great Britain, 1837-1901
      ab: Victorian publishers widely relied on readers to evaluate manuscripts. These gatekeepers played a central role in circumscribing the literary field and in shaping literary history. Drawing on extensive archival work, this essay examines the ways in which the readers for the publisher John Lane responded to the fraught cultural politics of the 1890s, paying particular attention to their articulations of artistic excellence and their dislike of sex-novels. I argue that these (primarily male) readers treated aesthetically and socially progressive women writers with hostility, leading to the rejection of manuscripts by Edith Lees Ellis, Mona Caird, and Charlotte Mew, and to the revision of work by George Egerton. Paying attention to the fugitive genre of the reader's report can help us to better understand the dynamics of publishing and encourage us to recover those works and writers who were subjected to the publishers' gatekeepers.
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    language: English
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