During the nineteenth century, women authors for the first time achieved professional status, secure income, and public fame. This book examines the various ways women writers negotiated the market realities of authorship, and looks at the myths and models women writers constructed to elevate their place in the profession.

"Written in transparently lucid prose, this book offers a deeply informed, evenhanded assessment of the several models of female authorship that circulated from the 1830s to the 1890s. The book deftly shows how Victorian myths of female authorship both emerged and diverged from the professional biographies of these women of letters."--Rosemarie Bodenheimer, Boston College
""Becoming a Woman of Letters" makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the nineteenth-century literary marketplace and of how women located themselves within the emerging profession of authorship. Elegant and engagingly written, this book will appeal to readers with an interest in the history of authorship, in the periodical press, and in women's writing."--Hilary Fraser, Birbeck College, University of London

"Her book avowedly contributes to the goal of a complete literary history of women's writing in the nineteenth century. Becoming a Woman of Letters is a major contribution to that history."---Alison Booth, Modern Philology