Especially in recent years, late nineteenth-century novels, short stories, and essays have attracted considerable scholarly interest. Research into texts by and about the New Woman has played a major role in shaping a critical understanding of fin-de-siècle literature, New Journalism, gender politics, activism, work, and education. Serious academic work has, in particular, focused on changing gender roles and women’s participation in the public sphere and urban spaces. This new title in the History of Feminism series, co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse, is a four-volume collection of primary materials which builds on this existing scholarship. It brings together a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts first published between the 1800s and the early twentieth century to present different aspects of what it meant to be a female journalist at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Making readily available such materials—which are currently very difficult for scholars, researchers, and students across the globe to locate and use—Female Journalists of the Fin de Siècle is a veritable treasure-trove. The gathered works are reproduced in facsimile, giving users a strong sense of immediacy to the texts and permitting citation to the original pagination. The collection is also supplemented by a detailed and comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which contextualizes the material in terms of fin-de-siècle publishing, journalism, and authorship. And with a detailed appendix providing data on the magazines, newspapers, and periodicals in which the articles and stories of the period were originally published, the collection is destined to be welcomed as a vital reference and research resource.