Emily Morse Symonds wrote literary biography at a time when the field was dominated by--though by no means limited to--male writers. Following in the tradition of "the many women writers who have succumbed to the mysterious attraction of the name 'George,'" as one reviewer put it, she used the male pseudonym "George Paston," partly in order to gain an unqualified entrance into the profession (The Academy, 24 December 1898). However, like George Eliot, Symonds consistently retained the pseudonym for all her published work long after the fact of her gender was publicly known and acknowledged. As a determined lobbyist for women's rights, she used her biographical and novelistic work to add to the contemporary understanding of the position of women by tracing idealized models of behavior, educational practices, and the marital institutions that had shaped the experiences of women in previous centuries. In addition, her passion for archival work...