ABSTRACT
In 1913, The New York Times reported on the findings of Cora Sutton Castle, an American academic who, as part of her doctoral dissertation, had compiled a statistical calculation of the worlds most famous women. Castles findings illuminate some telling points of value to this consideration of women and literary celebrity in a transatlantic context. Women and Literary Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century examines the tensions built into Anglo-American Victorian representations of gender, fame, and professionalism, noting that fame constituted a significant public achievement that often had complex and vexing consequences for women. Women and Literary Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century takes this claim and reverses it, asking how attitudes toward women's popularity as famous writers might have given rise to new ways of conceptualizing social norms for women in the nineteenth century. By creating strong, sympathetic protagonists who do not always reside comfortably in ideal bodies, the writers disallow the totalizing power of hegemonic ideologies of embodiment.
