Introduction: ‘Kitchen Literature’

Abstract

Included among the paintings displayed at the 1865 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition was a fairly unassuming portrait by William Powell Frith. It depicts a woman posing next to a writing desk with a small stack of books and a manuscript on it. She wears a modest black dress and gazes directly at the viewer with a frank expression. The Examiner’s review of the Exhibition concluded with an assessment of this particular painting, condemning the figure as ‘look[ing] like a lady’s maid whom one might think twice before engaging’ (‘Pictures’ 364). The subject was the author Mary Elizabeth Braddon, who was known at the time as the ‘Queen of the circulating libraries,’ but whom The Examiner instead contemptuously dubbed ‘The Queen of Kitchen Literature’ (‘Pictures’ 364).