W. T. Stead’s popular six-penny periodical, the Review of Reviews , fully embraced the cult of personality of the New Journalism of the late nineteenth century. Through an analysis of the periodical’s innovative use of both text and image, this article will explore Stead’s representation of one of the key personalities of his flagship publication: the South African writer Olive Schreiner. For Stead, the enigmatic yet divisive New Journalist, Schreiner, the celebrated yet contentious New Woman, fully embodied the spirit of his publication. By tracing their relationship through the channels of both private letters and public discourse, this article provides insight into the level of collaboration that existed between newspaper editors and the artists they chose to feature in their publications, and points to the dialogic and often performative nature of the relationship between writers and editors in fin de siècle periodicals.
This volume aims to both broaden and deepen understanding of women’s active engagement with this expanded periodical print culture, be that as consumers or contributors, in the context of the ‘general’ press and the dedicated women’s press, in both its commercial and specialised forms. Moving beyond expected periodical titles, geographical locations, and scholarly assumptions, the 35 essays collected in this volume reveal the complexity of women’s participation with print media and the diversity of their contributions as authors, readers, editors, journalists, correspondents, engravers, and illustrators. These chapters demonstrate the variety of trajectories forged by women as they entered into print, cultivated a public voice, and shaped public discourses about women’s lives, issues, and interests. Yet while the growth of the press undoubtedly empowered women to develop public identities and pursue professional careers, the conventions of journalistic publication problematised the notion of individual agency in significant ways. So while this volume showcases the diversity of opportunities created for women by the expansion of Victorian print media, both as producers and as consumers, it also explores the limits of that freedom.
No abstract
This article explores the competing models of gendered authorship emerging from Marie Corelli’s multiple print encounters with Olive Schreiner. Where Schreiner is cast by Corelli as the modish darling of a snobbish literary intelligentsia, who is beloved by critics and ignored by readers, Corelli herself emerges from her writings about Schreiner as the democratic author par excellence, a writer for the people rather than the press. In spite of the clear common ground that bridged their experience as celebrity authors, Corelli, in her writings about Schreiner, sought only to elucidate the ideological and artistic gulf that she identified as existing between them. As this essay will show, Corelli’s public resistance to Schreiner was a strike not only against an unfair male literary system of which she perceived Schreiner to be an arbitrary beneficiary, but also a rejection of the rhetoric of literary value that emerged in Britain during the fin de siècle. What Corelli failed to understand was that to be a woman writer at this time, however successful, was to occupy an ambiguous position within dominant, masculinist discourses of artistic distinction. A fuller exploration of Schreiner and Corelli’s positions within and experiences of the late-Victorian literary marketplace not only reveals the frailty of Correlli’s oppositional construction in real terms, but also signals the extent to which it was their shared status as women writers that was the key determinant shaping their respective experiences of professional authorship.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.