7 Best-Selling 19th-Century Female Novelists Who Aren’t Jane Austen

When you think of nineteenth-century women’s literature, you probably automatically think of nineteenth-century women’s literature Bronte sisters, Jane Austenor George Eliot. Think about Jane Eyre, pride and prejudiceor Middlemarch. Few people today know the names of Mrs. Henry Wood, Charlotte Riddell, or Maria Edgeworth—but these women all wrote hugely popular, best-selling novels that allowed them to command top dollar. To put their work in context, Austen had to pay for publication Mansfield Park herself, while Maria Edgeworth received a whopping £2,100 for just one of her novels. Here are some of the greatest Victorian women novelists you should add to your TBR pile.

1. Maria Edgeworth
2. Charlotte Riedel
3. Ellen Price, also known as Mrs. Henry Wood
4. Mary Russell Mitford
5. Sarah E. Farrow
6. Mary Elizabeth Braddon
7. Anne Radcliffe

Maria Edgeworth

Daughter of a rich father, Maria Edgeworth He was born in England but grew up in Ireland, where the Edgeworth family moved in 1782. Edgeworth was educated alternately at home and in a series of schools as the family moved between England and Ireland. Later, she became her father’s assistant and helped him manage the family property. I started writing in Mid-1790s She published her first novel, Rackrent Castlein the year 1800.

Thanks to her unusual upbringing, Edgeworth’s writing was not restricted by what was thought to be “appropriate” topics for young women of the time, and her books were very popular. She had achieved literary celebrity status by 1813, touring with luminaries such as Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott. A year later, she reached the pinnacle of her success, receiving £2,100 for her novel nursing.

• A must-read novel: Rackrent Castle

Charlotte Riedel

Charlotte Riedel (née Cowan) was born in Ireland, although in less lofty circumstances than Edgeworth. Her mother was English, and after her father’s death in 1851, Charlotte and her mother returned to London around 1855. There, she began her career as a writer, which she was the first to support. The dying motherand later to support her husband, J. H. Riedel, whom she married in 1857 and who was constantly in debt.

At first, she was repeatedly rejected for work (she would have done that). I mention later Of her early days in London, “I could not eat; I could not sleep; I could only walk the ‘stony streets’ and submit my manuscripts to publisher after publisher, who unanimously rejected them”), but eventually Thomas Cautley Newby published many of her short stories under the name F. G. Trafford. In 1856, Moroccans and Vines It was accepted by the publishing company Smith & Elder, which also published both Charlotte Brontë and Thackeray, and was published under the pseudonym Riddell Trafford.

As Emma Dale notes in her introduction to the reissue of Riddell’s semi-autobiographical novel Struggle for fame“Female authors typically write under masculine or gender-neutral pseudonyms to avoid being treated unfairly by critics and the general reading public because of their gender.” But by the 1860s, Riddell was commander She was well priced for her work and, according to Dale, “was prosperous enough to buck the trend.” The writer “was persuaded to publish under her own name,” Mrs. J. H. Riddell. In 1867, Riedel became part owner and editor of the magazine St. James Magazine. I wrote more 50 novels In her life.

• A must-read novel: Moroccans and Vines

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Ellen Price, also known as Mrs. Henry Wood

Growing upEllen Price – who later became Mrs. Henry Wood – was always surrounded by books, and began writing as a child. None of her early stories have survived. Unfortunately, I destroyed them. But it is recently She picked up the pen again to support her family when her husband’s business failed. Wood began contributing short stories to New monthly magazine While living with her husband in France. Her first novel, Danesbury Housewas written as part of a competition; She won £100, and the novel put her on the literary map.

Wood became a household name, shattering all sectors of society with her brilliant (if implausible) 1861 novel East Lane. By the end of her 30-year career, she was earning £6,000 a year. Wood’s works have been read around the world, and even reached Australia, where they outsold those of Charles Dickens.

Wood died in 1887. Her obituary was in London Illustrated News She described her as “one of the most accepted contributors to popular literature.” The times She described it as a “female phenomenon.”

• A must-read novel: East Lane

Mary Russell Mitford

Considered by many to be an unrivaled writer and playwright, Mary Mitford’s admirers included Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with whom she exchanged approx. 500 characters. Melodramatic tragic drama Rienzi It has been implemented 34 times; More than 8,000 copies of the play have been sold.

However, Mitford’s most famous work was hers series From prose sketches entitled Our villagewhich was published in installments in Ms. Magazine. according to times, There was “not a family in the whole country that didn’t tell these stories,” and Mitford earned enough money to buy a country resort of her own.

• A must-read novel: Our village

Sarah E. Farrow

Born in Illinois in 1859, Sarah Farrow became one of only five African-American novelists to publish their work in the entire nineteenth century, and the second black woman to do so, when she published her first and only novel, True lovein 1891. Its imaginative and melodramatic style of writing was popular at the time, and the novel was a smashing success: people in the United Kingdom in particular were keen to read a story written in America but in imitation of British writers such as Thackeray and Holmes.

At home, Farrow’s book was exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and her popularity soared. Sadly, her book is mostly forgotten today. As University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor of English Gretchen Gerzina He writes In conversation, “reason True love‘s disappearance may be simple: it takes place in England, a place Farrow may have never visited, and all of its characters are white. Farrow was emulating her favorite novelists, including… Charles Dickens And Oliver Wendell Holmes – in her writings. “If Farrow’s role models had been black women authors who wrote novels about black women, she might have shaped a different kind of novel,” Jerzyna concludes.

The name Sarah Farrow, which was on the lips of thousands of readers and in dozens of newspapers in the 1890s, has rarely been spoken since.

• A must-read novel: True Love: The Story of English Domestic Life

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in London in 1835 and had an unconventional childhood. Her mother, Fanny, defied the norms of the period by leaving her husband, who was also married Cheating On her – When Mary was four years old, she chose to raise her three children as a single mother. Braddon began writing early, and attended several schools before moving to Bath to become an actress. In 1861, Braddon raised eyebrows when she moved in with the already married John Maxwell, who was also publisher From some of her works. (They did not marry until October 1874, a month after the death of Maxwell’s wife Mary Ann.)

Braddon’s novel Lady Audley’s SecretPublished in 1862, it made her almost immediately famous and earned her a small fortune. She continued to publish two novels a year, which allowed her to buy a large house. By the time she died in 1915, Braddon had written more than 80 novels as well as a number of magazine articles.

• A must-read novel: Lady Audley’s Secret

Anne Radcliffe

Called the “Queen of the Gothic novel” of the 19th century and the “Shakespeare of Romantic writers”, Anne Radcliffe (née Ward), born 1764, Sold out Almost all other women writers of the nineteenth century. Her name is best known today through her 1794 book Secrets of Udolphowhich Jane Austen referred to in her own Gothic parody, Northanger Abbey.

Radcliffe was very private and shy, and not much is known about her life. In 1787, she met and married journalist William Radcliffe I encouraged To write to occupy her time. Her first novel, Athleen and Dunbine Castlespublished in 1789.

Radcliffe wrote five novels, which terrified, delighted, and enchanted their readers in equal measure, during her lifetime. The books were very popular, and she quickly became the highest-paid writer of the early 19th century. She stopped publishing novels after 1797 Italian– in theory because she no longer needed to do it to make money – and focused on poetry, where she had less success. Radcliffe died in 1823 Complications From pneumonia. Another novel, Gaston de Blondevillewas published posthumously.

• A must-read novel: Secrets of Udolpho