Note: This is a bibliography for a graduate course with a focus on research (especially in contemporary periodicals) and on women's fiction in the period from 1875-1900. The "Research Tools" section should be broadly applicable, but the sources listed in some other sections of the bibliography are more narrowly limited to the aims of the specific course. 

Research Tools

Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, ed. Walter Houghton, 5 vols, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966-90. Volumes 1- 4 present tables of contents from a number of major 19th century British periodicals; the fifth volume is a cumulative author index. The major accomplishment of the Wellesley Index has been to identify authors for a great many anonymous/unsigned contributions. 

     Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1881, with supplements to 1906) and its Cumulated Author Index. 

     Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Earliest volume is for 1890-1899; useful for finding author works and reviews in general periodicals. 

     British Library. General Catalogue of Printed Books. For a writer's complete works in volume form. Red volumes = books added to British Library collection pre-1976. Tan volumes for post- 1976 (check for new editions and new secondary sources). See also the listing of internet resources (next). 

     New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Lists, with dates, works by major and minor authors in literature and also in other fields such as history, children's literature, philosophy, science, etc.; provides brief list of secondary sources. Vol III (1800-1900), 1969. 

     Lohrli, Anne. Household Words: Table of Contents, List of Contributors and Their Contributions. Toronto:  Univ. of Toronto Press, 1973. Contributors to the periodical Dickens edited 1850- 1859; also has useful biographical notes. 

     Early American Periodicals Index to 1850. On microcard. Lists articles, fiction and poetry in American periodicals -- but since transatlantic "borrowing" was common in the days before international copyright, it can help turn up items by some of the earlier writers, and it covers a period not included in Poole's. 

     Propas, Sharon W. Victorian Studies: A Research Guide. New York: Garland, 1992. Book by a librarian about guides, bibliogra^_ phies, lists of sources, and where to look for information on many topics. 

     Victorian Studies annual bibliography--lists books, articles, dissertations, etc. published during the previous year in scholarly journals that treat any aspect of 19th century Britain. 

     MLA annual bibliography. 1981 - present is usually available online or from CD-ROM in academic libraries. Most of the useful pre-1981 sources will be picked up by the bibliographies of more recent books. 

     Year's Work in English Studies (annual). Overview, by period, of selection of books and journal articles, with brief summary/evaluative comments. Use this to get a mental fix on the nature and  possible value of work done in the past few years. 

     Victorian Fiction, a Guide to Research, ed. Lionel Stevenson. 1964. Supplemented by Victorian Fiction: A Second Guide to Research, ed. G.H. Ford, 1978. Evaluative surveys of research and criticism of established  novelists, with discussions of primary bibliography (letters, papers, editions, etc.); now outdated, but still a good starting place. See also Stevenson's The English Novel: A Panorama (1960), which includes brief critical surveys of many minor novelists as well as the major figures in a careful chronological scheme. 

     The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction, by John Sutherland, 1989. Alphabetical entries on novelists, publishers, editors, reviewers, etc., with brief synopses of some 500 novels. Includes useful index of  pseudonyms and of married women's alternate names. 

     Daims, Diva, and Janet Grimes. Toward a Feminist Tradition: An Annotated Bibliography of Novels in English By Women, 1891-1920. New York: Garland, 1982. A list of some 3,000 novels by women, with annotations done from contemporary reviews -- not from the books themselves. Useful and browsable guide to locating books, but evaluative comments not to be trusted. 

     Brightfield, Myron F. Victorian England in Its Novels, 1840- 1870. 4 vols. Los Angeles: UCLA Library, 1968. A typescript of excerpts from fiction (much of it minor) arranged by theme and topic; useful for discovering novels on particular topics. 

     Women Writers of the 1890s, compiled by G. Krishnamurti, edited by Margaret Drabble. London: H. Sotheran, 1991. An exhibition catalogue, this provides descriptive bibliographies of a number of interesting books, with illustrations, but is nothing like an exhaustive listing. 

Periodicals and Serialization: Helpful Backgrounds

     Vann, J. Don and Rosemary VanArsdel, eds. Victorian Periodicals: A Guide to Research. Volume 1 (MLA, 1978) has general advice on doing research in periodicals with chapters on finding lists, biographical resources, histories of the press, and tracing circulation. Volume 2 (MLA, 1989) contains articles on publishers' archives, the radical press, art history periodicals, women's serials, religious periodicals, children's magazines, serialized novels in magazines, and the Scottish and Welsh periodical press. Volume 3, now entitled Victorian Periodicals and Victorian Society (Toronto UP, 1994) covers specialist periodicals: professional (law, medicine, etc.), arts (music, theatre, authorship, illustration), occupations & commerce (advertising, financial, agriculture), and also temperance periodicals, comic periodicals, sport, workers' journals, and student journals. Periodicals of Queen Victoria's Empire (Toronto UP, 1996) has lists, bibliographies, histories, and finding aids for nineteenth-century English-language publications in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Southern Africa, and other colonial sites. 

     White, Robert B. Jr. The English Literary Journal to 1900: A Guide to Information Sources. Detroit: Gale, 1977. 

     Sullivan, Alan, ed. British Literary Magazines. Vol. 3: The Victorian and Edwardian Age, 1837-1913. Greenwood, 1984. 

     Wolff, Michael, John S. North and Dorothy Deering. The Waterloo Directory of Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900. Waterloo, Ontario: The University of Waterloo, 1977. 

     Fulton, Richard D., and C.M. Colee, eds. Union List of Victorian Serials. New York: Garland, 1985. Described as a union list of selected nineteenth-century british serials available in United States and Canadian libraries, the book has many gaps in coverage. It is very useful, however, for discovering the correct title and dates of a large number of periodicals and for sorting out the problems caused by periodicals with similar names. 

     Union List of Serials in Libraries of the United States and Canada (3rd ed, 5 vols., 1965). Outdated, but  more complete than Fulton; may help find nearby library that might have holdings of a periodical you want to see. 

     Victorian Novels in Serial by J. Don Vann, 1985. Provides serial divisions and date of publication for large number of novels. 

     Hughes, Linda K., and Michael Lund. The Victorian Serial. Charlotte: University of Virginia Press, 1991. Discusses effect of serialization on poetry as well as fiction. 

     Shattock, Joanne and Michael Wolff, eds. The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings. 1982. 

     Griest, Guinevere. Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970. Standard source of information on influence of libraries, holdings of various novelists. Also on influence of Geraldine Jewsbury as publishers' reader. 

     Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900, 1957. Essential information on circulation of books and magazines, literacy, modes of publication, etc. 

     White, Cynthia. Women's Magazines, 1693-1968. 1970. 

     Beetham, Margaret. A Magazine of Her Own?: Domesticity and Desire in the Woman's Magazine, 1800-1914. Routledge, 1996. First theoretically-informed discussion of women's magazines (earlier works, of which White's is the best, are all descriptive and/or historical), but limited to in-depth discussion of a small number of magazines taken as case studies. 

     Doughan, David and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals 1855- 1984: An Annotated Bibliography. Harvester, 1987. 

Biographical and Critical Sources for Women Writers

     Dictionary of National Biography, Ed. Leslie Stephen, etc. London: Oxford University Press, 1908- . Use the Concise volumes to discover quickly if someone is listed; use also the cumulative index in the supplementary volumes for people who have died since 1901. The DNB does not list living persons; thus, for example, Thomas Hardy is not found in the main volumes but in the 4th supplement (for 1922-1930), since he died in 1928. DNB is not good on women, but the most recent supplemental volume, "Missing Persons," has added many who were not in the original series. A completely revised version is now in progress with publication expected sometime after 2000. 

     The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, ed. Virginia Blain, Isobel Grundy, Patricia Clements. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. The best (i.e., most consistently feminist) of the recent bio-critical  guides to women writers. 

     Banks, Olive. The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists, Volume One: 1800-1930. New York: NYU  Press, 1985. Brief DNB- style entries on women and men active in various movements; not nearly as accurate or inclusive as it could be, but it's a starting place for some women who don't get into biographical dictionaries of great men. 

     Boase, Modern English Biography. People who died 1851-1900; shorter articles than DNB and much better on "lesser" figures, especially those with radical connections. 

     British Biographical Index - a single cumulated list reproduced from several hundred old biographical reference works. It's very useful for finding information on people too minor to appear in DNB or any standard literary reference work -- but it's also often undependable (since many older biographical dictionaries didn't check their facts). However, when looking for someone who's "lost" it can sometimes provide a starting point. The index is in volumes; the sources themselves on microfiche. 

     Robinson, Doris. Women Novelists, 1891-1920: An Index to Biographical and Autobiographical Sources.  New York: Garland, 1984. [A useful compilation of indexes to collective biogra^^phies. Note the date however; this doesn't cover the most recent work.] 

     Obituaries can often be discovered in Palmer's Index to the Times Newspaper. It's in annual volumes with quarterly cumulations; the obituaries for each quarter are listed under "deaths." Paley has the complete run of the London Times on microfilm from 1790 to the present. 

     Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York: New York University Press, 1970. Chapters on Eliza Lynn Linton, Olive Schreiner, Mary Ward, John Oliver Hobbes, Vernon Lee  

     Johnson, R. Brimley. The Women Novelists. 1918. Reprint. New York: Haskell House, 1972. Very early study of Burney, Austen, Bronte, Eliot, with mention of a few contemporaries. 

     Mermin, Dorothy. Godiva's Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830-1880. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. 

     Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. 

     Kanner, Barbara. Women in Context. G.K. Hall, 1997. Critical, biographical, and bibliographical guide to over 1,000 published autobiographies by women born in the British Isles or in the Empire from the 18th  through the early 20th century, with annotations and extremely useful indexes (so one can find, for example, autobiographies of single women, or Unitarians, or medical women, etc.) 

     Utter, Robert Palfrey, and Gwendolyn Bridges Needham. Pamela's Daughters. New York: Macmillan, 1936.  A study (mostly condescending) on "fashions in heroines," the book is nevertheless useful because it discusses a large number of popular writers and suggests titles that may be worth investigating for particular topics. Chapter on "New Girls for Old." 

     Oliphant, Margaret, and others. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign: A Book of Appreciations.  London: Hurst & Blackett, 1897. Chapters: Brontes; Eliot; Gaskell; Crowe, Clive, Wood; Fullerton, Stretton,  Manning; Craik; Kavanagh, Amelia Edwards; Norton; A.L.O.E., Ewing. 

     Alston, R.C. A Checklist of Women Writers, 1801-1900. London: British Library, 1990. Essentially a computer dump of women's names from the British Library catalogue, the book is a useful fast (but not terribly dependable) guide to drama, fiction, and poetry by women writers. Lists nothing published after 1900; you'll need to go to the BL catalogue itself for the later books by authors who remained active into the twentieth century. 

     Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. Glasgow: David Bryce and Son, 1893. Essays (originally women's magazine interview/articles) on: Lynn Linton, Mrs. Riddell, Mrs. L.B. Walford, Rhoda Broughton, John Strange Winter, Mrs. Alexander, Helen Mathers, Florence Marryat, Mrs. Lovett Cameron, Mrs. Hungerford, Matilda Betham Edwwards, Edna Lyall, Rosa Nouchette Carey, Adeline Sergeant, Mrs. Edward Kennard, Jessie Fothergill, Lady Duffus Hardy, Iza Duffus Hardy, May Crommelin, Mrs. Houstoun, Mrs. Alex Fraser, Mrs. Henry Chetwynd, Jean Middlemass, Augusta Stevens, Mrs. Leith Adams, Jean Ingelow 

     Braybrooke, Patrick. Some Goddesses of the Pen. 1926. Reprint. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969. Early twentieth- century popular writers: Sheila Kay-Smith, Rose Macaulay, Ethel M. Dell, Baroness Orczy, Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick, Cynthis Stockley, Mrs. Henry De La Pasture, Mrs. Baillie-Reynolds  

   Courtney, Janet. The Adventurous Thirties: A Chapter in the Women's Movement. London: Oxford University Press, 1933. Essays on: Hemans, Caroline Southey; L.E.L., Norton; Maria Jewsbury, Mrs. Elwood, Emma Roberts, Emily Eden; Frances Trollope, Martineau, Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley; Fry, Burdett-Coutts; Lady Holland, Lady Blessington, Lady Ashburton 

     Courtney, W.L. The Feminine Note in Fiction. London: Chapman and Hall, 1904. Chapters on: Mary Ward, John Oliver Hobbes, Lucas Malet, Gertrude Atherton, Mrs. Woods, Ethel Voynich, Elizabeth Robins, Mary Wilkins, and a group of diaries and love-letters. 

     Hale, Sarah Josepha. Woman's Record: Sketches of All Distinguished Women From the Creation to A.D. 1854. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1855. Reprint. New York: Source Book Press, 1970. Use carefully, since there are several alphabets. The supplements, which list living writers, are useful for contemporary information, though not particularly dependable. 

     Robinson, Doris. Women Novelists, 1891-1920: An Index to Biographical and Autobiographical Sources.  New York: Garland, 1984. A finding list, done largely from secondary sources, that indicates location of obituaries and entries in collective biographies as well as biographical studies. 

     Schleuter, Paul, and June Schleuter, ed. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. New York: Garland, 1988. Bibliographies fuller in this book than in most of the other recent collective biographies of women writers. 

Literary History, Criticism, Theory

     Ardis, Ann. New Women, New Novels: Feminism and Early Modernism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Excellent bibliography, as well as discussion of 1890s novels. 

     Auerbach, Nina. Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. 

     Basch, Francoise. Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel. Translated by Anthony Rudolf. New York: Schocken Books, 1974. Fictional ideals vs. historical and social realities. 

     Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction. Cornell University Press 1988.  How social- problem novels written by both "major" and "minor" authors between 1837 and 1867 represented and reshaped issues such as poverty, industrialism, and the position of women. 

     Calder, Jenni. Women and Marriage in Victorian Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Some  social backgrounds and information on the marriage market, plus discussion of Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell, Gissing, Meredith, Thackeray 

     Colby, Robert A. Fiction With a Purpose: Major and Minor Nineteenth-Century Novels. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967. Discussion of major novels in the context of large numbers of less-well-known fictions with similar topic; especially useful for locating titles and brief information about some unfamiliar novelists. Core novels include Villette (and the governess novel), The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch (and the emancipated woman) 

     Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York: New York University Press, 1970. Chapters on Eliza Lynn Linton, Olive Schreiner, Mary Ward, John Oliver Hobbes, Vernon Lee 

     Cruse, Amy. The Victorians and Their Reading. Boston: Houghton Miflin, 1935. Discusses many popular novelists. 

     Cunningham, Gail. The New Woman and the Victorian Novel. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1978. Mostly about Hardy, Meredith, Gissing 

     Cvetkovich, Ann. Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism. New Brunswick:  Rutgers University Press, 1992. Theoretical discussion of emotionalism, with chapters on Lady Audley's Secret, The Woman in White, East Lynne, and Daniel Deronda. 

     Fernando, Lloyd. "New Women" in the Late Victorian Novel. College Park: Penn State University Press, 1977. Primarily a study of Meredith, Moore, Gissing, and Hardy 

     Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader, 1837-1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A study of reader response, reader practices, and Victorian opinions about women and their reading -- exceptionally wide ranging, with extensive bibliography including very useful list of advice manuals. Separate chapters on sensation fiction and new woman novels. 

     Foster, Shirley. Victorian Women's Fiction: Marriage, Freedom and the Individual. Totowa NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1985. Study of Dinah Mulock Craik, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Sewell, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot. 

     Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Especially on Charlotte Bronte (all novels), George Eliot 

     Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, Vol. II: Sexchanges. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Discussion of Grand's The Heavenly Twins 

     Harman, Barbara Heal, and Susan Meyer. The New Nineteenth Century: Feminist Readings of Underread Victorian Fiction. New York: Garland, 1996. Essays on writers 1840s-1890s, including Anne Bronte, Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker, Geraldine Jewsbury, Charles Reade, Margaret Oliphant, George Moore, Sarah Grand, Mary Ward. 

     Hughes, Winifred. The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. First extensive contemporary discussion of sensation novel. Chapters on Reade, Braddon, Wood, Collins. 

     Keating, Peter. The Haunted Study: A Social History of the English Novel, 1875-1914. 1989. Only male authors are discussed in any detail, and the criticism is fairly bland, but there is a fair amount of social and historical background for a period not often covered in depth as a single unit. 

     Kestner, Joseph. Protest and Reform: The British Social Narrative By Women, 1827-1867. Madison:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Proposes that women writers invented the form of realistic problem fiction as mode of seeking social reform; traces many early women writers and titles. 

     Kranidis, Rita S. Subversive Discourse: The Cultural Production of Late Victorian Feminist Novels. New York: St. Martin's, 1995. Includes Mona Caird and Sarah Grand 

     Kucich, John. The Power of Lies: Transgression in Victorian Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Includes studies of Elizabeth Gaskell, Ellen Wood, Thomas Hardy, Sarah Grand. 

     Langland, Elizabeth. Nobody's Angels: Middle-Class Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Using etiquette and household manuals as well as feminist theory, considers Dickens, Gaskell, Oliphant, and Eliot. 

     Lansbury, Coral. The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection in Edwardian England. Madison:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Despite the word "Edwardian" in the title, the book has a great deal of  information about Victorian sexuality, cruelty, pornography -- from a feminist standpoint. 

     Manos, Nikki, and Meri-Jane Rochelson, eds. Transforming Genres: New Approaches to British Fiction of  the 1890s. New York: St. Martin's, 1994. Includes article on Sarah Grand 

Marks, Patricia. Bicycles, Bangs, and Bloomers: The New Woman in the Popular Press. University Press of  Kentucky, 1990. 

     Poovey, Mary. Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid- Victorian England.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Chapters on: Caroline Norton & Matrimonial Causes Act; Jane Eyre and governesses; Florence Nightingale; medical treatment; profession of writing. 

     Pykett, Lyn. The "Improper" Feminine: The Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing. New York: Routledge, 1992. Chapters on Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ellen Wood, Sarah Grand 

     Russet, Cynthia Eagle. Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge: Harvard   University Press, 1989. Scientific "knowledge" enlisted to enforce gender stereotypes. 

     Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Bronte to Lessing. Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1977. The book which initially opened the canon and proposed ways of tracing a women's tradition in prose fiction. 

     Stokes, John. In the Nineties. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. New Journalism, degeneration,  and other intellectual and social preoccupations of the 1890s. 

     Stubbs, Patricia. Women and Fiction: Feminism and the Novel, 1880-1920. Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979.  Brief mention of a few feminist writers, as context for Hardy, Moore, Meredith, Wells, Bennett, Forster, Lawrence. 

     Thompson, Nicola Diane. Reviewing Sex: Gender and the Reception of Victorian Novels. New York University Press, 1996. How gender standards are constructed in and interact with reviews of novels as seen  in case studies of Reade's It's Never Too Late to Mend, E. Bronte's Wuthering Heights, A. Trollope's Barchester Towers, C. Yonge's The Heir of Redclyffe. 

     Tuchman, Gaye, and Nina Fortin. Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change.  London: Routledge, 1989. Although the thesis has been called into question, the book is a very useful source of information. (The authors are sociologists, not literary scholars or historians.) 

Women: History, Social and Legal Status

     Kanner, Barbara. Women in English Social History, 1800-1914. New York: Garland. Vol. 1, 1990; Vol 2, 1988. Annotated bibliography of 19th & 20th century articles, books, and scholar^_ ship, organized by topic (marriage, health, law, religion, education, work, social reform, sexual issues, women's rights). 

     Helsinger, Elizabeth, Robin Sheets and William Veeder.The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and America, 1837- 1883. 1983. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Overview, with extensive quotation from contemporary sources. 

     Holcombe, Lee. Victorian Ladies At Work: Middle-Class Working Women in England and Wales, 1830-1914. Hamden CT: Archon Books, 1973. Data-rich book on women teachers, nurses, shopworkers, and clerical workers. 

     Lewis, Jane. Women in England, 1870-1950. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Historical sociology, with data on motherhood, family size, and employment. 

     Mitchell, Sally, ed. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1988. Brief entries on historical, artistic, social, literary, religious and cultural figures and topics; each provides introductory explanation and bibliography for further research. 

     Murray, Janet. Strong-Minded Women and Other Lost Voices From Nineteenth- Century England. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. An anthology of very brief quotations from 19th century sources on topics such as woman's mission, marriage, motherhood, single life, education, work, poverty, and prostitution -- useful primarily for suggesting sources. 

     Perkin, Joan. Victorian Women. London: John Murray, 1993. The only recent comprehensive book on Victorian women; written for general readers rather than scholars. 

     Rubinstein, David. Before the Suffragettes: Women's Emancipation in the 1890s. Brighton: Harvester, 1986.

     Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-1895. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Historian's work on marriage contract, divorce, married women's property,  infant custody, and husbands' rights. 

SALLY MITCHELL | ENGLISH DEPT, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY | SMITCH@VM.TEMPLE.EDU