Notable Women Authors of the Day

edited with an introduction and notes by Troy J. Bassett and Catherine Pope

Notable Women Authors of the Day began life as a series of interviews published in the popular women’s magazine the Lady’s Pictorial. The 30 featured authors were among the most successful of the late nineteenth century, and many were household names.

The interviews offers a tantalising glimpse into the life the Victorian woman writer, revealing the challenges of balancing their personal and professional lives. Helen C. Black describes the author and her home, sharing with the reader details of domestic arrangements and writing habits.   Told in the second person, the interviews create an immediacy and intimacy between the authors and the reader.

This Victorian Secrets edition includes:

• original portraits
• preface on Helen C. Black and the Lady’s Pictorial
• critical introduction
• explanatory footnotes
• updated profiles on the Notable Women
• suggestions for further reading

The text is based on the 1906 edition, including the following writers:

Mrs Lynn Linton Mrs Riddell Mrs L B Walford Rhoda Broughton John Strange Winter (Mrs Arthur Stannard) Mrs Alexander Helen Mathers Florence Marryat Mrs Lovett Cameron Mrs Hungerford Matilda Betham Edwards Edna Lyall Rosa Nouchette Carey Adeline Sergeant Mrs Edward Kennard

Jessie Fothergill Lady Duffus Hardy Iza Duffus Hardy May Crommelin Mrs Houstoun Mrs Alexander Fraser Honourable Mrs Henry Chetwynd Jean Middlemass Augusta de Grasse Stevens Mrs Leith Adams Jean Ingelow Annie S. Swan Sarah Grand Marie Corelli Rita (Mrs Desmond Humphreys)

Troy J. Bassett is Assistant Professor of English & Linguistics at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. He has published articles on the nineteenth-century literary marketplace and also maintains the website At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901.

Catherine Pope is currently researching her doctoral thesis on Florence Marryat at the University of Sussex.  She is also the founder of Victorian Secrets.