摘要：The first three decades of novels in the Comhill Magazine (1859-1887) take us (among major novelists) from Thackeray, Trollope and Mrs Gaskell to Hardy, Meredith and Gissing and (among minor ones) from Charles Lever and Margaret Oliphant to James Payne and Rider Haggard. During the Period there are only slight changes in the social ackground against which the nove s are set, but there is a discernible change, the greatest of the twenty-eight year span, in the presentation of women characters. This is true of both major an minor novelists. The women of the early Comhill novels are inextricably caught in a pattern of dependence on men in order to ensure their future. However, by the end of this short period in the novels published in the periodical or rejected for publication by the editors there is a steady progression towards heroines confident of their personal abilities and in the reality of practical and intellectual independence.
