"How did book reviews shape the fate of novels and their authors during the height of womens literary influence? At the turn of the nineteenth century, British women novelists were publishing more fiction than their male counterparts, yet their place in literary history remains precarious. In British Women Novelists and the Review Periodical, Megan Peiser offers a compelling new perspective on this pivotal period by examining the overlooked power of the review periodical in shaping literary reception, authorial careers, and the novel as a genre. Through a dynamic study of the Novels Reviewed Database, 1790-1820 (NRD)-the first dataset to systematically catalog novels reviewed as novels during the Romantic period-Peiser demonstrates how these reviews operated not as static judgments, but as an interconnected system of influence, circulation, and criticism. Periodicals functioned as central components of the literary marketplace, steering readers tastes, framing authors reputations, and reinforcing cultural notions of gender and genre. Examining the context of these reviews-such as Frances Burneys ambivalent negotiations with her critics and the rise and decline of Charlotte Smiths status among the "sister-queen" novelists-Peisers analysis foregrounds the gendered dynamics of literary evaluation. By tracing the dialogue between reviewers and authors-especially in novel prefaces-she uncovers how women writers used, resisted, and responded to critical discourse. Peiser also confronts the limitations of traditional literary data by accounting for overlooked voices and diverse forms of authorship. This fascinating literary history argues for feminist bibliographic intervention, restores the complexity of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century review ecosystem, and provides a vital scholarly tool to reframe how we understand womens novels and the systems that have shaped literary memory"--"The focus of British Women Novelists and the Review Periodical is the turn of the nineteenth century, a period since historicized as Romanticist.

Peisers monograph, as a study of contemporary review history, uncovers the influence of the book review periodical on the solidification of the novel as the genre we know today, and furthermore on centuries of scholarship on women writers since their days as active writers"--.