Elsie B. Michie here provides insightful readings of novels by Mary Shelley, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot, writers who confronted definitions of femininity which denied them full participation in literary culture. Exploring a series of abhorrent images, Michie traces the links between the Victorian definition of femininity and other forms of cultural exclusion such as race and class distinctions.

Tracing the publishing history of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford from its initial 1851-53 serialization in Dickens's Household Words through its numerous editions and adaptations, Recchio focuses especially the text's deployment in support of ideas related to nation and national identity on both sides of the Atlantic. Making extensive use of primary materials, Recchio offers a convincing micro-history of the way English literature was positioned in England and the United States to support an Anglocentric cultural project.