=Literature.=--It is only recently that women have entered the field of literature in any numbers. Until the last thirty years or so it may almost be said that only a few exceptional women, able to make their mark as poets or novelists, were occupied to any serious extent in literary work. Nor when we remember that the pursuit of literature was considered to “unsex” a woman, and that Mrs. Somerville had to keep a supply of plain sewing ready to cover her books and papers if a visitor should call, is the deficiency very difficult to account for. Only natures in which genius is a compelling force can burst such iron bonds. Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Somerville, Charlotte Bronté, and Mrs. Browning--to name a few of the pioneers--first broke down the barriers. Then other quiet workers crept in, magazines became more numerous, and offered a ready outlet for literary work; biography, history, and science began to be handled by women. Harriet Martineau perhaps more than any other woman typified the modern phase of literary activity, fulfilling in her single person functions any one of which would content most literary women, being novelist, essay writer, historian, and journalist in one. She was the first of her sex to enter upon the routine every-day work of literature, which has been freely trodden since, and her writings embody much of the tone of thought and feeling which is characteristic of the “women’s movement” of to-day. =Fiction.=--The branch of literature in which women are most successful at present is undoubtedly fiction. Besides the few novelists whose names are widely known, there are a multitude of scribblers of lesser fame who yet make a good living by their profession. There are grades in these things, and writers whose works are seldom found on the shelves of the fastidious are yet in good demand at the libraries, and have a circulation and a public of their own. An immense amount of second class fiction is written by women, who seem to have a special gift for producing tales that are readable and brightly written without ever rising above the level of mediocrity. There is a still lower literary grade, in which poverty of invention keeps company with a wretched literary style. Yet books of this class are not always unsuccessful.