Adrienne E. Gavin is Emeritus Professor of English Literature and Co-founder and Honorary Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers (ICVWW), Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Carolyn Oulton is Professor of Victorian Literature and Co-founder and Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers (ICVWW), Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

1.Introduction; Adrienne E. Gavin and Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton.- 2. A Decade of Experiment: George Eliot in the 1860s; Margaret Harris.- 3. 'Duck him!': Private Feelings, Public Interests, and Ellen Wood's East Lynne; Tara MacDonald.- 4. [Tr]ains of Circumstantial Evidence: Railway 'Monomania' and Investigations of Gender in Lady Audley's Secret; Andrew F. Humphries.- 5. 'There is great need for forgiveness in this world': The Call for Reconciliation in Elizabeth Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers and A Dark Night's Work; Elizabeth Ludlow.- 6. 'The plain duties which are set before me': Charity, Agency, and Women's Work in the 1860s; Kristine Moruzi.- 7.'[S]mothered under rose-leaves': Violent Sensation and the Location of the Feminine in Eliza Lynn Linton's Sowing the Wind; Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton.- 8. 'Fleshly Inclinations': The Nature of Female Desire in Rhoda Broughton's Early Fiction; Tamar Heller.- 9. Crumbs from the Table: Matilda Betham-Edwards' Comic Writing in Punch; Clare Horrocks and Nickianne Moody.- 10. Transcending Prudence: Charlotte Riddell's 'City Women'; Silvana Colella.- 11. '[M]ute orations, mute rhapsodies, mute discussions': Silence in George Eliot's Last Decade; Fionnuala Dillane.- 12.'His eyes commanded me to come to him': Desire and Mesmerism in Rhoda Broughton's 'The Man with the Nose'; Melissa Purdue.- 13. '[E]mphatically un-literary and middle-class¿: Undressing Middle-Class Anxieties in Ellen Wood's Johnny Ludlow Stories; Alyson Hunt.- 14. 'Sinecures which could be held by girls': Margaret Oliphant and Women's Labour; Danielle Charette.- 15. 'More like a woman stuck into boy's clothes': Transcendent Femininity in Florence Marryat'sHer Father's Name; Catherine Pope.- 16. 'I am writing the life of a horse': Anna Sewell's Black Beauty in the 1870s; Adrienne E. Gavin.- 17.Forging a New Path: Fraud and White-Collar Crime in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 1870s Fiction; Janine Hatter.