Gatekeeping: Publishers’ Readers, Gender, and the Literature of the 1890s

Abstract: Victorian publishers widely relied on readers to evaluate manuscripts. These gatekeepers played a central role in circumscribing the literary field and in shaping literary history. Drawing on extensive archival work, this essay examines the ways in which the readers for the publisher John Lane responded to the fraught cultural politics of the 1890s, paying particular attention to their articulations of artistic excellence and their dislike of sex-novels. I argue that these (primarily male) readers treated aesthetically and socially progressive women writers with hostility, leading to the rejection of manuscripts by Edith Lees Ellis, Mona Caird, and Charlotte Mew, and to the revision of work by George Egerton. Paying attention to the fugitive genre of the reader’s report can help us to better understand the dynamics of publishing and encourage us to recover those works and writers who were subjected to the publishers’ gatekeepers.