Reading women

Some days ago we highlighted an article that among other things talked about the reading of books in Jane Eyre. Now we want to announce the recent publication (last October) of a book enterily devoted to the Victorian women reading topic: "Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present". The book is part of a collection named Studies in Book and Print Culture and it's edited by Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley and published by the University of Toronto Press.

Literary and popular culture has often focused its attention on women readers, particularly since early Victorian times. In Reading Women, an esteemed group of new and established scholars provide a close study of the evolution of the woman reader by examining a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century media, including Antebellum scientific treatises, Victorian paintings, and Oprah Winfrey’s televised book club, as well as the writings of Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Attending especially to what, how, and why women read, Reading Women brings together a rich array of subjects that sheds light on the defining role the woman reader has played in the formation, not only of literary history, but of British and American culture. The contributors break new ground by focusing on the impact representations of women readers have had on understandings of literacy and certain reading practices, the development of books and print culture, and the categorization of texts into high and low cultural forms.

The chapter devoted to Charlotte Brontë has the title: "1. Reading Women/Reading Pictures: Textual and Visual reading in Charlotte Bronte's Novels and Nineteenth-Century Paintings" and is written by Antonia Losano.

BrontëBlog readers who want to get a glimpse of this chapter, can do it on http://print.google.com.

Categories: Books, Scholar,Victorian_Era, Charlotte_Brontë