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 provides 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 BrontE, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Attending especially to what, how, and why women read,...

Depicted in popular films, television series, novels, poems, and countless media reports, Sylvia Plath's women readers have become nearly as legendary as Plath herself, in large part because the depictions are seldom kind. If one is to believe the narrative told by literary and popular culture, Plath's primary audience is a body of young, misguided women who uncritically -- even pathologically -- consume Plath's writing with no awareness of how they harm the author's reputation in the process.

Janet Badia investigates the evolution of this narrative, tracing its origins, exposing the...