7 Best-Selling 19th-Century Female Novelists Who Aren’t Jane Austen
Add these forgotten novels to your TBR pile. When you think of 19th-century women’s literature, it’s likely you automatically think of the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, or George Eliot.
You think of Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, or Middlemarch. Few people today know the names Mrs. Henry Wood, Charlotte Riddell, or Maria Edgeworth—yet these women all wrote immensely popular, best-selling novels that allowed them to command top dollar.
To put their work into context, Austen had to pay to publish Mansfield Park herself, while Maria Edgeworth was paid the enormous sum of £2100 for just one of her novels.
Here are some of the greatest Victorian female novelists you should add to your TBR pile. The daughter of a wealthy father, Maria Edgeworth was born in England but grew up in Ireland, where the Edgeworths moved in 1782.
Edgeworth was educated alternately at home and at a series of schools as the family moved between England and Ireland.
Author’s summary: Explore the works of 19th-century female novelists beyond Jane Austen.