Victorian Periodicals Review

Abstract:

This article challenges the reputation of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury (1812–80) as a censorious literary critic and publisher’s reader who reflected the socially conservative values of the mid-Victorian fiction market. An examination of Jewsbury’s unpublished reader’s reports, Athenaeum reviews, and extracts from her controversial first novel Zoe: A History of Two Lives (1845) reveals that—far from being censorious—Jewsbury rejected euphemism in favour of “unvarnished” fiction that highlighted social injustice and marital abuse. At a time when the books adorning the tables of family drawing-rooms were subject to intense moral scrutiny, Jewsbury used her influence to promote candour over propriety.