Literature and Society in Victorian Britain – serie

This volume of 13 original interdisciplinary essays surveys the relationship of Victorian works and the urban experience that shaped them. Each essay addresses how the selection or rejection of an urban setting provide the context for a representative product of Victorian art or culture.

Maria S. Rye, a woman motivated by both feminist and philanthropic ideals, devoted her life to the migration of women and girls out of England. This biography gives an account of Rye's activities from her early engagement with liberal feminism through her association with the Langham Place group in the 1850s, her work as a journalist and with the Society for Promoting Women's Employment, through to her efforts in women's and children's emigration Between 1861 and 1896, Maria S. Rye sent many hundreds of single women out to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and more than four thousand children to Canada, all with the promise of a better life in the British colonies than they could expect at home in England. Like many nineteenth century advocates of emigration, she saw it as a panacea for many social ills, taking people from impoverishment in the old world to the hope of better prospects in the new. Unlike other advocates, she linked this enthusiasm for emigration with the ideals of liberal feminism, arguing that women and girls should share the opportunities for advancement that the colonies offered to men and boys Rye played a central role in developing organizations to facilitate the migration of women and girls, starting with the Female Middle Class Emigration Society in 1861. After 1869 she concentrated on the migration of so-called gutter-children to Canada, where her pioneering efforts were followed by numerous other philanthropic associates, such as Barnardo This biography analyzes how feminism and philanthropy intertwined in her activities, and how her early concerns with the rights of women to economic opportunity came to be over-ridden by an authoritarian streak that led to the tragic excesses of her work in juvenile migration.

This is the first full-length study to focus specifically on representations of motherhood in fiction by such Victorian writers as Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant, Caroline Norton, and Ellen Price Wood. These authors presented an idealized view of motherhood as part of a campaign to gain social and legal status for mothering in a society in which married women were not legal entities and children born in wedlock were the inalienable property of their fathers. These writers used dead mother plots which reversed New Testament parables so that the mother plays the leading role, and maternal circle plots, which portray adult daughters and their mothers raising children outside marriage. This fiction, which showed how children benefit from good mothering, was instrumental in married mothers eventually obtaining equal parental rights.

The Autobiography is the personal journal of an independent Victorian woman who describes her day-to-day activities as a businesswoman, social reformer, scholar, and journalist; makes many insightful observations on gender issues; and provides intriguing details of her relationships with many of the leading political and literary figures of her day, particularly the novelist George Eliot, whom she admired as a writer and as a personDuring the journal years, 1876-1900, Simcox made many significant contributions toward improving people's lives, but she was always particularly concerned with women's issues. With her friend Mary Hamilton, she established a shirtmaking cooperative to provide employment for women, kept the accounts, and managed the enterprise. She helped establish trade unions and promote women's suffrage, served as a delegate to the Trade Union Congress, and worked closely with Emma Paterson, Annie Besant, Harriet Law, Charles Bradlaugh, and William Morris. Simcox was also the author of three books and a regular contributor to leading periodicalsThe Autobiography reveals Simcox's childhood, her attitudes toward men and marriage, and her relationships with her mother and her two older brothers, both noted writers. The journal provides unique insights into the mind of a remarkable 19th-century woman who worked in and left her mark on a man's world. Her book is a fascinating source of facts, observations, and opinions for scholars and readers interested in Eliot, Victorian literature, and society, gender and women's issues.

First published in 1998. This collection of original essays identifies and analyzes 19th-century women's theological thought in all its diversity, demonstrating the ways that women revised, subverted, or rejected elements of masculine theology in creating theologies of their own. While women's religion has been widely studied, this is the only collection of essays that examines 19th-century women's theology as suchA substantial introduction clarifies the relationships between religion and theology and discusses the barriers to women's participation in theological discourse as well as the ways women overcame or avoided these barriers. The essays analyze theological ideas in a variety of genres. The first group of essays discusses women's nonfiction prose, including women's devotional writings on the Apocalypse; devotional prose by Christina Rossetti and its similarities to the work of Hildegard von Bingen; periodical prose by Anna Jameson and Julia Wedgwood; and the letters of Harriet and Jemima Newman, sisters of John Henry Newman. Other essays examine the novel, presenting analysis of the theologies of novelists Emma Jane Worboise, Charlotte M. Yonge, and Mary Arnold Ward. Further essays discuss the theological ideas of two purity reformers, Josephine Butler and Ellice Hopkins, while the final essays move beyond Victorian Christianity to examine spiritualist and Buddhist theology by womenThis collection will be important to students and scholars interested in Victorian culture and ideas-literary critics, historians, and theologians-and particularly to those in women's studies and religious studies.

First published in 1999. and Middlemarch and of a range of nineteenth-century historical works, including works by and about women that are discussed extensively here for the first time. The blurring of boundaries between historical and fictional narratives, stimulated by the enormous success of Walter Scott's novels, and the development of social history are shown to have been key factors in an uneven, controversial, but persistent feminization of history, the first because of the longstanding association of novels with women the second because social history focuses on the private sphere, traditionally women's domain. Along with the appearance of numerous historical texts written by women and taking women as their subjects, these developments challenged conventional beliefs about historical authority and relevance that had long relegated women to the margins, both literally and metaphorically. In its exploration of these changes and their implications, Gender and Victorian Historical Writing revises standard assumptions about Victorian ideas of history, finding an awareness of and experimentation with gender and genre that prefigure theoretical and scholarly concerns in contemporary women's history.

This volume of 13 original interdisciplinary essays surveys the relationship of Victorian works and the urban experience that shaped them. Each essay addresses how the selection or rejection of an urban setting provide the context for a representative product of Victorian art or culture.

The Autobiography is the personal journal of an independent Victorian woman who describes her day-to-day activities as a businesswoman, social reformer, scholar, and journalist; makes many insightful observations on gender issues; and provides intriguing details of her relationships with many of the leading political and literary figures of her day, particularly the novelist George Eliot, whom she admired as a writer and as a personDuring the journal years, 1876-1900, Simcox made many significant contributions toward improving people's lives, but she was always particularly concerned with women's issues. With her friend Mary Hamilton, she established a shirtmaking cooperative to provide employment for women, kept the accounts, and managed the enterprise. She helped establish trade unions and promote women's suffrage, served as a delegate to the Trade Union Congress, and worked closely with Emma Paterson, Annie Besant, Harriet Law, Charles Bradlaugh, and William Morris. Simcox was also the author of three books and a regular contributor to leading periodicalsThe Autobiography reveals Simcox's childhood, her attitudes toward men and marriage, and her relationships with her mother and her two older brothers, both noted writers. The journal provides unique insights into the mind of a remarkable 19th-century woman who worked in and left her mark on a man's world. Her book is a fascinating source of facts, observations, and opinions for scholars and readers interested in Eliot, Victorian literature, and society, gender and women's issues.

Maria S. Rye, a woman motivated by both feminist and philanthropic ideals, devoted her life to the migration of women and girls out of England. This biography gives an account of Rye's activities from her early engagement with liberal feminism through her association with the Langham Place group in the 1850s, her work as a journalist and with the Society for Promoting Women's Employment, through to her efforts in women's and children's emigration Between 1861 and 1896, Maria S. Rye sent many hundreds of single women out to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and more than four thousand children to Canada, all with the promise of a better life in the British colonies than they could expect at home in England. Like many nineteenth century advocates of emigration, she saw it as a panacea for many social ills, taking people from impoverishment in the old world to the hope of better prospects in the new. Unlike other advocates, she linked this enthusiasm for emigration with the ideals of liberal feminism, arguing that women and girls should share the opportunities for advancement that the colonies offered to men and boys Rye played a central role in developing organizations to facilitate the migration of women and girls, starting with the Female Middle Class Emigration Society in 1861. After 1869 she concentrated on the migration of so-called gutter-children to Canada, where her pioneering efforts were followed by numerous other philanthropic associates, such as Barnardo This biography analyzes how feminism and philanthropy intertwined in her activities, and how her early concerns with the rights of women to economic opportunity came to be over-ridden by an authoritarian streak that led to the tragic excesses of her work in juvenile migration.

First published in 1999. and Middlemarch and of a range of nineteenth-century historical works, including works by and about women that are discussed extensively here for the first time. The blurring of boundaries between historical and fictional narratives, stimulated by the enormous success of Walter Scott's novels, and the development of social history are shown to have been key factors in an uneven, controversial, but persistent feminization of history, the first because of the longstanding association of novels with women the second because social history focuses on the private sphere, traditionally women's domain. Along with the appearance of numerous historical texts written by women and taking women as their subjects, these developments challenged conventional beliefs about historical authority and relevance that had long relegated women to the margins, both literally and metaphorically. In its exploration of these changes and their implications, Gender and Victorian Historical Writing revises standard assumptions about Victorian ideas of history, finding an awareness of and experimentation with gender and genre that prefigure theoretical and scholarly concerns in contemporary women's history.