Book excerpt: "Students and teachers of Victorian women's careers will be grateful for [Mermin's] intelligent and equable guidance as they negotiate the paradoxes of Godiva's Ride." -- Modern Philology "This brief study should be enormously helpful to students seeking an introduction to feminist approaches to Victorian writers." -- Choice "Mermin's fine book is a work of synthesis that moves across many genres of women's writing... and touches on neglected writers of the period... as well as on the canonized few." -- American Historical Review "Godiva's Ride is a stimulating and enjoyable study of an exceptionally rich subject... " -- Victorian Periodicals Review "Accessible, original, and gracefully written, Godiva's Ride is likely to be as engrossing for the general reader as for the expert." -- Victorian Studies Describes the first great age of women's writing in England. Mermin discusses how women were encouraged to become writers, how they were discouraged and hindered, and what they wrote. The many women entering the mainstream of English literature in this era included the Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Margaret Oliphant, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Harriet Martineau.