The New Woman in Fiction and Fact Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms

A cultural icon of the fin de siegrave;cle , the New Woman was not one figure, but several. In the guise of a bicycling, cigarette-smoking Amazon, the New Woman romped through the pages of Punch and popular fiction; as a neurasthenic victim of social oppression, she suffered in the pages of New Woman novels such as Sarah Grand's hugely successful The Heavenly Twins . The New Woman in Fiction and Fact marks a radically new departure in 19th century scholarship to explore the polyvocal nature of the late Victorian debates around gender, motherhood, class, race and imperialism which converged in the name of the New Woman.

Angelique Richardson is Lecturer in Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Exeter.

Chris Willis teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London