Fame and Misfortune: Edging Women Out of the Great Literary Tradition

This article expands previous work on the impact of the consolidation of literature on the opportunities for Victorian women writers. That work had indicated that, as the high-culture novel evolved, the occupation "novelist" behaved like an "empty field" and men edged women out of their former numerical dominance as novelists. This paper examines the processes of political dominance through which men edged women out of participation in the evolving "Great Tradition of English Literature." It also studies how publications contributed differently to the fame garnered by early men and women writers and by late ones. The method used is regression analyses of data gathered from the Dictionary of National Biography and the British Museum Catalogue.