Mornington Crescent: A Miniature Portrait

Abstract

Abstract: In this paper, we argue that propinquity–physical proximity leading to frequent interaction with publishers, artists, and each other–aided the careers of both the subjects and the essayists represented in Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign (1897). Focusing on Mornington Crescent in the 1850s, we draw on new modes of digital mapping that allow us to reconstruct the influence of propinquity on popular women writers, opening up new understandings of the literary networks that made their careers possible. We reanimate the personal and geographic connections amongst the subjects and authors in WNQVR , to demonstrate the reverberations of propinquity and early-career literary connections throughout the long careers of women writers who first flourished in the mid-nineteenth century.