Reading women

Jennifer Phegley, Janet Badia

Literary and popular culture has often focused its attention on women readers, particularly since early Victorian times. In Reading Women, a group of scholars provide a close study of the evolution of the woman reader by examining a range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century media, including Antebellum scientific treatises, Victorian paintings, and Oprah Winfrey's televised book club, as well as the writings of Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Zora Neale Hurston. Attending especially to what, how, and why women read, Reading Women sheds light on the defining role the woman reader has played in the formation, not only of literary history, but of British and American culture. The contributors focus on the impact representations of women readers have had on understandings of literacy and certain reading practices, the development of books and print culture, and the categorization of texts into high and low cultural forms.