Masking and Unmasking the Gendered Self in English Annuals of the 1820s

Many studies have investigated the strong link between materialist consumption and artistic production during the early nineteenth century, since consumerist literature was not simply figured as the exchange of money for luxury goods, but it also illustrated the psychological dynamics of expressiveness and gender definition. After the flourishing of reviews and magazines, a new kind of fashionable publication emerged around the 1820s: the annuals. In this article I will investigate women poets’ contributions to the annuals focusing my attention on how they disguised or revealed their own self through interplay of masquerade while describing other women’s lives. Since each writer expressed different viewpoints on femininity and the role of women in society, alternating condescending and traditional opinions with more radical and less conservative remarks, I will trace a map of these various approaches to gender and social issues, discussing the strategies women writers employed to convey their aesthetic and political messages.