Colour'd Shadows Contexts in Publishing, Printing, and Reading Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers

"By examining a wide range of literary works and literary-related activities by women in nineteenth-century Britain, "Colour'd Shadows" shifts the focus of scholarship away from the authority of self representation in determining meaning and onto the site, the method, and the time of manufacture of literary works; in this way, Hoagwood and Ledbetter are able to show that what appears to be transparent in literature (i.e., meaning and content) is in fact part of an illusion created by the processes of commodity production. This study is sure to trouble and enliven literary criticism and open a path to new sorts of materialist literary inquiry." - Daniel P. Watkins, Duquesne University