Jessica Cox – författare

Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill, arousing a ferment of unemployment and discontent among his workers. Robert considers marriage to the wealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar to solve his financial woes, yet his heart lies with his cousin Caroline, who, bored and desperate, lives as a dependent in her uncle's home with no prospect of a career. Shirley, meanwhile, is in love with Robert's brother, an impoverished tutor - a match opposed by her family. As industrial unrest builds to a potentially fatal pitch, can the four be reconciled? Set during the Napoleonic wars at a time of national economic struggles, Shirley (1849) is an unsentimental, yet passionate depiction of conflict between classes, sexes and generations.

Co-published by Routledge and Edition SynapseOver recent years, research into religious belief during the Victorian period and the early twentieth century has grown in diversity and importance. The centrality of faith-based discourses to women of the period has long been recognized by scholars in the field. But until now relatively little significance has been attached to the fundamental relationship between women’s faith and women’s rights. This new title in the History of Feminism series remedies that omission. Women and Belief, 1852–1928 is a six-volume collection of primary materials covering a wide range of opinions about women, their self-identity, and the combination of their spiritual and political beliefs.Addressing the most debated aspects of women’s religious, social, cultural, and political rights, the collection adopts an historical overview of the period and provides an authoritative representation of the wide body of literature written by and about women’s faith. Beginning with an example of how religious discourse provided a model for acceptable female behaviour and a satirical take on women’s rights and spiritualism and ending with an economist’s psychoanalytic study of female belief from 1928, Women and Belief, 1852–1928 provides a unique collection of different viewpoints. It brings together the work of women writers, theologians, philosophers, and economic and cultural historians to illustrate the multiplicity of voices and opinions on the issues of suffrage and religious faith. This diversity is equally reflected in the broad geographical coverage of the collection which draws on works not only from the United Kingdom and United States but also includes materials from Canada and India, and moves beyond the Christian into the spheres of theosophy, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. The gathered materials include works of non-fiction, poetry, analytical works, satires, pamphlets, sermons, spiritual (auto)biography, and periodical articles.Making readily available such materials—which are currently very difficult for scholars, researchers, and students across the globe to locate and use—Women and Belief, 1852–1928 is a veritable treasure-trove. The gathered works are reproduced in facsimile, giving users a strong sense of immediacy to the texts and permitting citation to the original pagination. And with detailed and comprehensive introductory, biographical, and contextual material in each volume illustrating the ways in which the materials chart the gradual evolution of feminist thinking about belief, spirituality, and faith that directly fed into the emerging discourses of political and social rights for women, the collection is destined to be welcomed as a vital reference and research resource.

‘An important, fascinating and frequently shocking read.’ - BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of Girl, Woman, OtherCovering a fascinating period of population growth, high infant mortality and deep social inequality, rapid medical advances and pseudoscientific quackery, Confinement is the untold history of pregnancy and childbirth in Victorian Britain.During the nineteenth century, having children was frequently viewed as a woman’s central function and destiny – and yet the pregnant and postnatal body, as well as the birthing room, are almost entirely absent from the public conversation and written histories of the period. Confinement corrects this omission by exploring stories of pregnancy and motherhood across this period. Drawing on a range of contemporary sources, Jessica Cox charts the maternal experiences of women, examining fertility, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, maternal mortality, unwanted pregnancies, infant loss, breastfeeding, and postnatal bodies and minds.From the royal family to inhabitants of the workhouse, this absorbing history reveals what motherhood was truly like for the women of nineteenth-century Britain.

Since the establishment of sensation fiction in the 1860s, key trends have emerged in critical readings of these texts. From Victorian responses emphasising the 'lowbrow' or potentially dangerous qualities of the genre to the prolific critical attention of the present day, this Reader's Guide identifies the dominant approaches to sensation fiction and charts the critical trends of various scholarly evaluations and interpretations. With coverage spanning empire, class, sexuality and adaptation, this is the ideal companion for students of Victorian Literature looking for an introduction to the key debates surrounding sensation fiction.

The work traces the afterlife of Victorian sensation fiction, taking in the neo-Gothic writing of Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt, contemporary popular historical detective and YA fiction by authors including Elizabeth Peters and Philip Pullman, and the literary fiction of writers such as Joanne Harris and Charles Palliser.

The work traces the afterlife of Victorian sensation fiction, taking in the neo-Gothic writing of Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt, contemporary popular historical detective and YA fiction by authors including Elizabeth Peters and Philip Pullman, and the literary fiction of writers such as Joanne Harris and Charles Palliser.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, one of the most prolific authors of the Victorian period, remains best known for her sensation fiction, but over the course of a long career contributed to a multitude of literary genres, working as a journalist, short story writer and editor, as well as authoring more than eighty novels. This exciting new collection of essays reappraises Braddon’s work and offers a series of new perspectives on her literary productions. The volume is divided into two parts: the first considers Braddon’s seminal sensation novel, Lady Audley’s Secret; the second examines some of her lesser known fiction, including her first published novel, The Trail of the Serpent, as well as some of her twentieth-century fiction. The first collection of essays on Braddon to appear since 1999, this volume sheds new light on the ‘Queen of the circulating libraries’.