Cover; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1 Reconstructing Charlotte; 3 "Great genius breaks all bonds"; 4 Correcting the Record, Creating a New One; 5 The Text as Child; Conclusion; Afterword; Works Cited; Index.

Focusing on representations of women's literary celebrity in nineteenth-century nonfiction and fiction, Weber examines the transatlantic cultural politics of gender, sex and the body. Looking at discursive patterns and texts by authors like Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Fanny Fern, Margaret Oliphant and Eliza Potter that feature successful woman writers, Weber argues that discursive representations of the legitimately famous woman used celebrity as a tactic for altering perceptions about femininity and female identity