The Myth of Superwoman
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"A novel which sold well in the eighteenth century - and even the most successful book rarely sold more than a few thousand copies - did so within a fairly closed circle of readers, many of whom as writers also participated in deciding the prevailing criteria of literary excellence." --The Myth of Superwoman (1990) by Resa L. Dudovitz, page 21 "By the mid-nineteenth century cheaper editions and improved access to reading material through subscriptions and in France, through reading rooms, pushed sales of a popular novel as high as 10,000 copies. Although critics continued to function as the arbiters of taste, the critical elite could no longer claim literature to be their exclusive property."--The Myth of Superwoman (1990) by Resa L. Dudovitz, page 22 |
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The Myth of Superwoman : Women's Bestsellers in France and the United States (1990) is a book by Resa L. Dudovitz.
It examines the nature and history of women's bestsellers in France and the United States. The book features an introduction to the concept of bestsellers, detailing the difference between bestseller lists in the United States (New York Times list) and France (Bernard Pivot with Apostrophe).
One of the basic tenets of the book is that women played an important part in the professionalization of fiction of the 19th century.
Commonly held belief: "the commercial success of a book is usually its strongest indictment against literary quality" --page 20
"Nina Baym (1981: 123–124) points out that, as late as 1977 the “American canon did not include any women novelists."--page 20
Definitions of the bestseller
- Defined by bestseller lists
- Bestseller: number of readership
- Bestseller: A genre?
