Drawing on theoretical paradigms from gender and cultural studies, Martin develops a participatory model of modernist literature and culture.

Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.

Focusing on the early Modern and Victorian periods, the author finds covert revolutionaries in four familiar practitioners of a strategy she calls creative negativity: poet-photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), novelist-essayist Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837-1919), activist-spiritual leader Annie Besant (1847-1933), and actress-writer Elizabeth Robins (1862-1952).