Noncanonical Victorian Women Novelists in the Twenty-First Century: Reconsidering Recovery Work

Abstract

Over the last decades, projects of rediscovery, driven by feminist criticism as well as a growing interest in the noncanonical itself, have reshaped Victorian Studies. Nevertheless, even as a growing number of these rediscovered texts have now been absorbed into the canon, their inclusion in anthologies, general overviews, and companions has been intriguingly uneven. This article offers a reconsideration of the feminist recovery of noncanonical Victorian texts in the contrasting case studies of the sensation novel, the silver-fork novel, and antifeminist writing. Examining the rediscovery and shifting reception of these three genres sheds light on the changing goals, methods, and effects of recovery work, as well as the opportunities that exist for this work in the twenty-first century.