19th Century Summer Reading

Forgotten Lady Novelists

I keep coming across the names of 19^th century lady novelists that I’d never heard of, so I started making a reading list. I would see their lives quickly described: Novelist. Wrote 39 books. Suffragist, also wrote novels. Reformer, preacher, teacher, author of 6 books. Wife/mother/teacher/writer. Wrote 10 books. Best selling. Best paid. 

Here are some of their names: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Helen Hamilton Gardner, Grace Livingston Hill, Louisa May Alcott, Lillian Deveraux Blake, Mary Jane Holmes, Celia Parker Woolley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Andrews Denison, E.D.E.N. Southworth, Abigail Scott Duniway, Pauline Hopkins….this list could go on and on.

I don’t recognize all of these particular authors and I haven’t (yet) read their books, but I recognize them generally as part of that “damned mob of scribbling women” who have been writing “sentimental” or “popular” novels ever since Jane Austen until today. 

These lady novelists of the yore (and now) were writing creatively to fulfill themselves artistically, to get their ideas and point of view out into the world, who had something to say about women’s lives, and who, frankly, also had to pay the bills. Some of them were also unabashedly using the novel to communicate their feminist agenda. 

Their sales numbers are wild--Mary Andrews Denison wrote over 80 novels that sold more than a million copies. E.D.EN. Southworth was making more than $10,000 a year and was one of the most well-paid authors of her time. Other novelists had hits selling 25,000 or more copies. Those would be good numbers today, by the way. 

As an English major who studied women and fiction, and as a student of the romance genre, I have studied the early lady novelists—Jane, Fanny, Maria, etc. I knew about Louisa May Alcott (but only recently learned about all her pulpy, sensational fiction that paid the bills until Little Women hit). There was a huge gap in my knowledge…until Georgette Heyer (1920s and onward) and then Kathleen E Woodiwiss (1970s). But of course women were there, writing stories about their lives the whole damn time. Did I miss this class? Or is it not offered? 

Whether it’s romance novels or “women’s fiction” it has a long history of existing. It is both wildly popular and utterly ignored or forgotten at the same time. It is probably not taught in school, probably because it was read for fun. I, for one, like knowing that as a reader and writer of this type of fiction, I’m having a delightful time participating in a long and rich tradition.

Have you heard of any of these authors? Any names you would add to this reading list?