A new canon

Abstract

Originally published as a special issue of Women’s Writing in May 2013, the book and its new introduction build on the important work of Andrew Maunder’s Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction, 1855-1890 (2004), which showcased the striking diversity of what is often considered a homogeneous genre. Happily, in the twenty-first century we have access to Google Books, Internet Archive, and also print-on-demand editions of many obscure novels. [...]Hager sees her as “bridg[ing] the gap between sensation fiction’s notorious investigation of the body’s experiences of physical desire and New Woman discourse’s sustained inquiry into the possibility of agency for women within Victorian society.” Ouida certainly upset the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, who censored three stage adaptations of her novel Moths (1880), and many free libraries refused to stock her works.