Discusses the figure of the unchaste woman in a wide range of fiction written between 1835 and 1880, including serious novels by Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, and George Eliot; popular novels that provided light reading for middle-class women; sensational fiction; propaganda for social reform; and stories in cheap periodicals which reached a different and far wider audience than either serious or popular novels. During these years, some women were struggling to become women, instead of the angels of purity that sentimental morality had made of them. The sexual woman, the whore, the mistress, the runaway wife, the seduced or fallen innocent, all attracted a cluster of ideas about the differences between women and men, about the power structure in sexual relationships, and about women's place in the social and moral world. In considering these topics, this book traces women and illuminates differences in the fiction writer for different social classes. -- Publisher description

Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.