The Politics of Writing: Julia Kavanagh, 1824-77

Julia Kavanagh was a popular and internationally published writer of the mid-nineteenth century whose collective body of work included fiction, biography, critical studies of French and English women writers and travel writing. In this critically engaged study, Fauset sees Kavanagh as a significant but neglected writer and returns her to her proper place in the history of women’s writing. Through the examination of Julia Kavanagh’s work, letters and official documents Fauset paints a succinct and telling portrait of a woman who achieved not simply a necessary economic independence, but a means through which she could voice the convictions of her sexual politics in her work. Fauset’s study addresses the current enthusiasm for the reclamation of neglected women writers, and also brings to light interesting material that might otherwise have remained unknown to the specialist. This study will engage academics, students and enthusiasts of Victorian literature and women’s writing.