Edward Everett Root Publishers Co. Ltd.
EER
Mrs. Catherine Gore
Julie Donovan
About this book
This book examines the life and career of Catherine Grace Frances Gore (1798-1861), a best-selling author in her day who challenged traditional attitudes limiting women’s position in society. Gore was an innovative literary figure, unafraid of genre boundaries as she enlarged the scope of women writers’ work. In her questioning of gender norms, Gore was decidedly modern, albeit complex, for her work endorsed bourgeois values and proscribed women’s roles while also contesting them. While Gore has been rediscovered in recent years, there remain gaps in studies of her achievements, which this analysis fills.
Drawing on contemporary estimations of her work and feminist theories, this study demonstrates how the position of women remained a dominant theme in Gore’s writing. She explored this in the light of other social issues, including suffrage, colonialism, the growth of the mercantile and professional classes, and advances in transport, technology, and education.
Gore is most well known for her silver fork novels, which, mostly set in the Regency period, featured the lives of upper-class characters primarily for a middle-class audience. Her silver fork novel, Cecil; Or, Adventures of a Coxcomb (1841), established Gore as a skilled satirist. Gore’s comedic talent runs through her work, ranging from good-natured humour to a caustic wit that skewered hypocrisies around gender inequality.
As she deftly intertwined political and social issues with light-hearted romance and domesticity, Gore took inspiration from writers such as Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth. She developed lasting friendships with other writers who advocated for women’s rights, including Caroline Norton, Geraldine Jewsbury and Sydney Owenson. She also became friends with Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
Ever the pragmatist and the sole breadwinner for her family, Gore became highly attuned to the vicissitudes of the literary marketplace and the types of writing that would earn her a living. Out of necessity, she adopted an assertive stance in her dealings with publishers and booksellers. Although literature was a business, as Gore well knew, she also conveyed how it was a positive cultural force, particularly for women, that transcended commercial value. This study encapsulates the key points in Gore’s considerable literary work and groundbreaking career.
About the author
Julie Donovan is an Associate Professor at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her research mainly focuses on nineteenth-century literature and culture, with a special interest in women’s writing. She has published a book, Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) and The Politics of Style, together with articles and book chapters on Charlotte and Branwell Brontë, Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, Eliza Lynn Linton, Harriet Martineau, Catherine Gore, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Walter Scott and Charles Dickens.
Available October 2026
ISBN 9781915115874 Hardback £45.00 Order
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216 x 140 mm c. 230 pps.
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