
The first comparative study of the women's sensation novel of the 1860s and the New Woman fiction of the 1890s, two genres which undermined the ideal of the proper feminine' and dangerously put female sexuality on the literary agenda.

The women's sensation novel of the 1860s and the New Woman fiction of the 1890s were two major examples of a perceived feminine invasion of fiction which caused a critical furore in their day.
Both genres, with their shocking, fast' heroines, fired the popular imagination...