The Awkward Age in Women's Popular Fiction

Girls and the Transition to Womanhood, 1850-1900

 

What's it about?

Tracing evolving treatments of female adolescence through a host of long-forgotten women's fictions, the book reveals that representations of the girl in popular women's literature importantly anticipated depictions of the feminist in the fin de siècle New Woman writing; conservative portrayals of girls' hopes, dreams, and subsequent frustrations helped clear a literary and cultural space for the New Woman's "awakening" to disaffected consciousness.

Bilston has made significant contributions to our understanding of girlhood and girls’ cultures in literature and wider print culture”
— Beth Rodgers