Routledge - The Novelist in the Novel: Gender and Genius

Why do writers so often write about writers? This book provides the first comprehensive account of the fictional novelist as a character in literature. It explores how our ideas of literary genius and the definition of an author are shaped and challenged within novels about novelists, a genre that has previously lacked critical examination. By using both close and distant reading techniques to analyze a large corpus of author-stories, this work examines the forms and functions of these narratives. It looks closely at the characters within them to understand how they influence our perception of authorship. This text is an essential resource for those studying the relationship between fiction and the reality of the creative process.