Intersections of Gender, Class, and Race in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond

Barbara Leonardi earned her AHRC-funded PhD in English Studies from the University of Stirling for which she was awarded “The Professor G. Ross Roy Medal” for the top PhD thesis submitted in 2013. Her AHRC-funded post-doctorate focused on “James Hogg’s Contribution to International Periodicals.” She has published articles and book chapters on James Hogg, Walter Scott and pragmatics linguistics for literature. She is a reviewer for The Year’s Work in English Studies from volume 96 for the section on the Romantic novel.

“The chapters may be most useful for those preparing to teach these topics to undergraduates, who may not be familiar with the Angel in the House and other tropes and concepts that have become canonical. This collection, and collections like it, also serve as an invitation for readers and editors to reconsider the aims of, and audiences for, such texts.” (Melissa Shields Jenkins, Victorian Studies, Vol. 62 (3), 2020)“This volume is a meaningful contribution to ongoing conversations about class, race, and gender. … The scope of this collection is ambitious, and the chapters collected in this volume contribute to a nuanced understanding of the Victorian era and its connections to our present time.” (Scott Larkin, Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol. 52 (4), 2019)

• 1. Introduction: The Family Metaphor - Barbara Leonardi.- 2. Motherhood, Mother Country, and Migrant Maternity - Barbara Leonardi.- 3. "No crime to kill a bastard-child": Stereotypes of Infanticide in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales - Daniel J. R. Grey.- 4. The New Woman in her Confinement: Fin de siècle Constructions of Maternity and Motherhood - Kirsty Bunting.- 5. "Another Class": The Lady's Maid in Short Stories 1920-1950 - Anna Fenge.- 6. The Destabilisation of Gender and National Boundaries in Lewis Grassic Gibbon's A Scots Quair: A Long Nineteenth Century Perspective - Carla Sassi.- 7. "Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small": Katherine Mansfield as a Threshold Person - Angela Smith.- 8. Transferential Rhetoric and Beyond: The West Indian Presence in Maria Edgeworth's Belinda and Amelia Opie's Adeline Mowbray - James Morris.- 9. Bandsmen, Brass Band Uniforms and Nineteenth-Century Militarism: Southern Pennine Bandsmen and Stereotypes of Military Masculinity, c. 1840-1914 - Stephen Etheridge.- 10. Comparative Decadence? Male Queerness in Late Nineteenth- and Late Twentieth-Century Fiction - Rainier Emig.- 11. Cherchez La Femme: Looking for Lesbian Femininities in Literature, 1850-1928 - Sarah Parker.- 12. "Utterly Subversive of Female Delicacy": Victorian Sensibilities and the Unspeakable Allegations in Countess Russell's Divorce Suit - Michael Bedo.- 13. Killing the "Angel in the House": Violence and Victim-Blaming in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Claire O'Callaghan.