Reviewing Sex: Gender and the Reception of Victorian Novels

When Scenes of Clerical Life appeared anonymously in 1853 the Saturday Review pictured its author, George Eliot, as a bearded Cambridge clergyman and the revered father of several children. When Anthony Trollope published Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel anonymously in 1867, the London Review argued that the internal evidence required the author to be female.

Gender played a pivotal role in the reception of Victorian novels and was not only an analytical category used by Victorian reviewe…