ABSTRACT
Recent feminist criticism has led to a number of revisionist studies of Victorian women as authors, readers, translators and editors, and to alternative analyses of women's periodicals; but the subject of 'the woman reviewer' is still relatively untrodden ground. 2 Seminal articles and books such as those by John Gross (The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters), John Woolford ('Periodicals and the practice of literary criticism'), and Isobel Armstrong (Victorian Scrutinies) invariably assumed a male reviewer. Women's criticism was mentioned only sporadically and nearly always in studies covering the critical reception of canonical authors and their books as, for instance, in the prestigious Critical Heritage series. It was, therefore, always presented as a negligible part in the literary production of the Victorian age. There were some notable exceptions to this general rule: Elaine Showalter and Kate Flint mention a small selection of women reviewers in their respective analyses, 4 Monica Frykstedt demonstrated the influence and ubiquity of Geraldine Jewsbury in the 'New Novels' column of the Athenaeum 5 and, fairly recently, 10both Nineteenth Century Prose and the Victorian Periodicals Review paid special attention to the involvement of women, among them women critics, with Victorian periodicals. 6
