Sonia Hofkosh explores the role of gender in early nineteenth-century British literary culture, especially in terms of the simultaneous commercialization and feminization of literature. Examining a wide range of texts, she shows how the development of a female reading audience aroused anxieties in the male writers of the period. The author also considers the ways in which three women writers (Mary Shelley, Sarah Hazlitt and Jane Austen) attempted to negotiate the minefields of a male-dominated literary discourse that rendered the female "invisible."

Sonia Hofkosh explores the role of gender in early nineteenth-century British literary culture, especially in terms of the simultaneous commercialization and feminization of literature. Examining a wide range of texts, she shows how the development of a female reading audience aroused anxieties in the male writers of the period. The author also considers the ways in which three women writers (Mary Shelley, Sarah Hazlitt and Jane Austen) attempted to negotiate the minefields of a male-dominated literary discourse that rendered the female "invisible."