The social novel in nineteenth-century Britain has been considered the effort of a predominantly male canon of writers. In this ground-breaking study, originally published in 1985, Joseph Kestner challenges that assumption, arguing that it was a succession of female writers - women often meriting only a footnote in literary history - who initiated and advanced the tradition of using narrative fiction to register protest, expose abuses, and promote reform.

Kestner explores the contributions to Victorian social policy by the fiction of these neglected authors (Hannah More, Elizabeth Stone, Frances Trollope, Charlotte Tonna, Camilla Toulmin, Geraldine Jewsbury, Fanny Mayne, Julia Kavanagh, Dinah Mulock Craik) as well as more prominent female authors (Maria Edgeworth, Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bront