ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how reformist periodicals enabled Elizabeth Gaskell to find context for her literary activism. As a journalist, Gaskell contributed to the literature of urban investigation by writing about the domestic lives of the poor. The chapter also explores how the discourse on Gaskell's celebrity in the 1850s was part of a larger cultural debate over women's authorship in mid-Victorian culture. Throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century, the discourse on female authorship and the Woman Question played an important role in critical reviewing practices. If Mary Barton argued for the politicization of middle-class domesticity, the revelation of Gaskell's identity in December of 1848 served to place the middle-class woman writer at the center of that moral and intellectual space. However much critical fascination with the 'abused woman author' facilitated the discourse on women's rights and employment opportunities, it also posed some significant barriers to the development of their literary careers.
