Women in the Literary Market 1800-1900

 

Courteney Grant, fl. 1873-1882
[pseudonym of Constance Blount]

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Constance Blount wrote five novels, of which Our Next Neighbour was the third.

In Blount’s first letter she expresses her delight with the cover design of her novel Our Next Neighbour, and its binding ("I think I never saw any novel so smart before..."). About the book she observes: "I did not intend to be half so hard on the half-educated as on the upper classes, but in exposing... the sins of the latter, one c'd not... refrain from showing the more ridiculous & disagreeable but less serious faults of those supposed to be below them."

Her second letter deals with the growing disagreement between Bentley’s and Clowes & Clowes, the firm that printed Our Next Neighbour. Bentley is not happy with the price the printers have charged for making author's corrections. She complains about Clowes: "I do not wonder at their being more expensive than the others [printers], for they were much more troublesome." She argues that she did not make many changes and as she used to print herself, she was "very careful not to give trouble."

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[top] Courteney Grant. Our Next Neighbour. London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1876. [bottom] Two autograph letters addressed to George Bentley. September, [1876].
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introduction
early role models
entering the literary market
learned poets
getting into print
charlotte bronte and george eliot
sin and sensation
new women
education
journalism
activism
L.T. Meade
the three volume format
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