‘A novel in two years was thought the proper course’: Overproduction and the Quality of Literature in Charlotte Riddell’s <i>A Struggle for Fame</i>

As rising literacy rates and industrialisation increased the accessibility of the written word, many began to fear the oversaturation of the nineteenth-century literary marketplace. The growing anxiety led, in part, to the differentiation of high culture literature and popular fiction. This divide and the accusation of overproduction have caused critics and scholars to dismiss the works of popular and prolific Victorian women novelists, including Charlotte Riddell. This article explores Riddell’s A Struggle for Fame (1883) as a response to critics who accused her of overproduction. She contrasts the literary journeys of Glen Westley and Bernard Kelly to show that overproduction does not preclude an author from writing high culture literature. Glen is a high culture novelist whose production rate at the end of the novel is more in line with that of a popular writer. Meanwhile, Barney spends years on a novel that is a complete failure. With these depictions, Riddell asks readers to consider the validity of the criteria for the popular/high culture divide, calling into question the institution that has dismissed her works and those of her female contemporaries.