In Geniuses, Addicts, and Scribbling Women, contributors argue for critical attention to the ways in which writers have been portrayed through various genres, modalities, and historical periods, and the significant impact these portrayals have had on the popular imagination.

Through a critical discussion of an array of written and visual texts that feature a writer as a main character, Geniuses, Addicts, and Scribbling Women: Portraits of the Writer in Popular Culture argues for a more nuanced conception of the role of writers in society, their relationships with their reading publics, the portrayals and realities of their labor, and the construction of a “writing” identity.

Expounding upon the critical genre of authorship studies, the contributors take on complex issues such as economics, professionalization, gender politics, and writing pedagogy to shape the dialogue around the nature of representation and the practice of narrative. Ultimately, contributors consider the ways in which debates over art, craft, authorial celebrity, and the literary marketplace define the parameters of culture in a given period and influence the work of culture producers. The implications of such an analysis reveal much about the status and value of creative writers and their work.

This collection covers a wide range of historical periods offering a complex understanding of representations of writers from the medieval period to the Netflix era. Such an evolution challenges the perception of the writer as a monolithic presence in society and highlights its multiplicity, diversity, and its transformations through cultural and political movements.

Introduction: Geniuses, Addicts, and Scribbling Women: Portraits of the Writer in Popular Culture

Cynthia Cravens

Chapter One: Finding Their Way: Coming of Age as a Writer in John Irving’s The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year

Megan A. Anderson

Chapter Two: Traveling with Writers: Gender, Genre, and Creativity in Bleaker House and Less

Julie Barst

Chapter Three: The Narrating Serpent: Two Distinct Representations of Authorship in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller

Sarah Briest

Chapter Four: Public Personas of Dangerous Men: Killing Constructed Identities with Suicide by Sequel

Christopher Burlingame

Chapter Five: Follow the Lead: The Evolving Story of Lois Lane and Her Writing

Sandra Eckard

Chapter Six: Scribbling Pleasure: Undertaking the Sentence of Desire

Amy B. Hagenrater-Gooding

Chapter Seven: Jane-as-Fanny: Patricia Rozema’s Woman Writer in Mansfield Park

Melanie D. Holm

Chapter Eight: From Silly Lady Novelists to Celebrity Male Modernists: Gender and the Representation of Authorship in Fiction 1850-1949

Elizabeth King

Chapter Nine: Re-gendering Genre: Self-Conscious Supernaturalism in Muriel Spark’s The Comforters

Alexandra Oxner

Chapter Ten: The Evolution of Daredevil’s Karen Page: From Damsel-in-Distress to Writer-Hero

Gian Pagnucci