Tradition and how far writers fit into or diverge from the demands of tradition is one of the most debated issues in literary discussion. Gender, however, is not often part of discussions which depend on such questions at the decisiveness of the Modernist break with the Victorian period or whether Postmodernism makes tradition meaningless. By contrast the very existence of a specifically female tradition is still an urgent subject of debate, and it is clear that many nineteenth-century women writers were troubled in their search for literary foremothers. This autobiographical impetus can be...