The Story of a Modern Woman

by Steve Farmer (Author), Ella Hepworth Dixon (Author)

New
Paperback
2004
$20.78

Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman originally appeared in serial form in the women's weekly The Lady's Pictorial. Like Hepworth Dixon herself, the novel's heroine Mary Erle is a woman writer struggling to make her living as a journalist in the 1880s. Forced by her father's sudden death to support herself, Mary Erle turns to writing three-penny-a-line fiction, works that (as her editor insists) must have a ball in the first volume, a picnic and a parting in the second, and an opportune death in the third.

This Broadview edition's rich selection of historical documents helps contextualize The Story of a Modern Woman in relation to contemporary debates about the New Woman.

Synopsis

Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman originally appeared in serial form in the women's weekly The Lady's Pictorial. Like Hepworth Dixon herself, the novel's heroine Mary Erle is a woman writer struggling to make her living as a journalist in the 1880s. Forced by her father's sudden death to support herself, Mary Erle turns to writing three-penny-a-line fiction, works that (as her editor insists) must have a ball in the first volume, a picnic and a parting in the second, and an opportune death in the third.

This Broadview edition's rich selection of historical documents helps contextualize The Story of a Modern Woman in relation to contemporary debates about the New Woman.

$20.78

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 295
Edition: 1
Publisher: Broadview Press
Published: 15 Jan 2004
ISBN 10: 1551113805
ISBN 13: 9781551113807

Media Reviews

The Story of a Modern Woman is both the tale of a woman's struggle to realize her independence as a professional writer and the story of modern London itself. On the verge of a new century, the crowded, gas-lit metropolis is depicted to almost cinematic effect as both the greatest obstacle to a woman's self-realization, and her surest hope for the future. Steve Farmer's splendid new edition allows us to fully appreciate Hepworth Dixon's achievement, providing a well-chosen selection of essays and articles that sets the novel within the context of the major intellectual and cultural debates of the fin de siecle. This is a most welcome addition to our understanding of the New Woman. - Christopher Keep, University of Western Ontario

Author Bio

Steve Farmer teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature at Arizona State University, Tempe. He is the editor of the Broadview editions of Wilkie Collins's Heart and Science (1996) and The Moonstone (1999).