Nineteenth-century American women's serial novels / Dale M. Bauer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bauer, Dale M., 1956- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in american literature and culture ; 183.

Cambridge studies in american literature and culture ; 183

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women novelists, American--19th century--History and criticism.

Women novelists, American.

Women novelists--19th century--History and criticism.

Women novelists.

American fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Women and literature--United States--History--19th century.

Women and literature.

Women in literature--History--19th century.

Women in literature.

Women--United States--Social conditions--19th century.

Women.

Serialized fiction--United States--History and criticism.

Serialized fiction.

Literature publishing--United States--History--19th century.

Literature publishing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 172 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Summary:

Nineteenth-Century American Women's Serial Novels explores the prolific careers of four exemplary novelists - E. D. E. N. Southworth, Ann Stephens, Mary Jane Holmes, and Laura Jean Libbey. These commercially successful writers helped to shape the popular tradition of serial magazine fiction by drawing on readers' tastes along with their cultural concerns. Their astonishing productivity led magazine editors and publishers to return to them repeatedly for more serials to be turned into even more novels, even as they reprinted these fictions under new titles. Dale M. Bauer analyzes how serials deployed the repetition of plots and the traumas representing the sources of women's anxieties and pain. Arguing that these novels provided temporary resolutions to the social, economic, and psychological tensions that readers faced, Bauer explains how this otherwise forgotten archive of fiction now offers an extraordinarily expanded range of women's literary effort from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Introduction

1. Why Read More Southworth

2. Stephens and the Serial Novel

3. Women in Nineteenth-Century Prisons

4. Mary Jane Holmes's "Spooneys," "Crackers," and "White Niggers"

5. Laura Jean Libbey and Sexual Transformation

6. Racial Intimacy and Serial Novels

Conclusion.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 21 Nov 2019).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-108-77586-1

1-108-77625-6

1-108-76101-1