Carrie MacMillan, Lorraine McMullen, and Elizabeth Waterston have uncovered information about the lives and works of six such writers. Rosanna Leprohon, May Agnes Fleming, Margaret Murray Robertson, Susan Frances Harrison, Margaret Marshall Saunders, and Joanna E. Wood were once-popular novelists who are now for the most part ignored, with virtually all of their works out of print. MacMillan, McMullen, and Waterston show that these six writers deserve modern recognition not only for their literary accomplishments but also for what they reveal, through their work and their lives, about the condition of the woman writer in nineteenth-century Canada.

The writings of these six women from varied backgrounds reflect their different experiences of life in the late nineteenth century. In this study a biographical profile of each author, set in the contemporary social context, is provided, as well as an analysis of career development, emphasising publishing history and critical response. As each case history unfolds, the broader picture emerges of an era when many ideas of personal and public life were changing.

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Lorraine McMullen is professor emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa and adjunct professor at the University of Victoria. She is co-editor of a three-volume anthology of short stories written by Canadian women: Pioneering Women: Beginnings to 1880; Aspiring Women: 1880-1900 and New Women: 1900-1920 (UOP: 1993, 1993 and 1991) and co-author of Silenced Sextet: Six Nineteenth-Century Canadian Women Novelists (1993).

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"Makes a significant original contribution ... The pieces in this volume not only recover and 're-read' the novelists' works, but also offer significant primary research into their lives and literary production." Heather Murray, Department of English, University of Toronto.
"Helps to fill a glaring gap ... A useful contribution to Anglo-Canadian literary history and to feminist studies ... The essays represent valid bio-literary research and sympathetic interpretation ... These women novelists should not be forgotten." D.O. Spettigue, Department of English, Queen's University.