The History of British Women’s Writing, 1830–1880 The History of British Women’s Writing General Editors: Jennie Batchelor and Cora Kaplan Advisory Board: Isobel Armstrong, Rachel Bowlby, Helen Carr, Carolyn Dinshaw, Margaret Ezell, Margaret Ferguson, Isobel Grundy, and Felicity Nussbaum The History of British Women’s Writing is an innovative and ambitious monograph series that seeks both to synthesise the work of several generations of feminist schol- ars, and to advance new directions for the study of women’s writing. Volume edi- tors and contributors are leading scholars whose work collectively reflects the global excellence in this expanding field of study. It is envisaged that this series will be a key resource for specialist and non-specialist scholars and students alike.

Titles include: Liz Herbert McAvoy and Diane Watt (editors) THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 700–1500 Volume One Caroline Bicks and Jennifer Summit (editors) THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1500–1610 Volume Two Mihoko Suzuki (editor) THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1610–1690 Volume Three Ros Ballaster (editor) THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1690–1750 Volume Four Jacqueline M. Labbe (editor) THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1750–1830 Volume Five Holly Laird (editor) THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1880–1920 Volume Seven Mary Joannou (editor) THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1920–1945 Volume Eight Claire Hanson and Susan Watkins (editors) THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1945–1975 Volume Nine Mary Eagleton and Emma Parker (editors) THE HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN’S WRITING, 1880–1920 Volume Ten

History of British Women’s Writing Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-230-20079-1 hardback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, Also by Lucy Hartley PHYSIOGNOMY AND THE MEANING OF EXPRESSION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CULTURE (2001/2006) DEMOCRATISING BEAUTY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN: Art and the Politics of Public Life (2017) The History of British Women’s Writing, 1830–1880 Volume Six

Edited by Lucy Hartley Lucy Hartley

History of British Women’s Writing ISBN 978-1-137-58464-9 ISBN 978-1-137-58465-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978–1–137–58465–6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2018 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover credit: Victorian women writing at a desk, from the story Madame Leroux, by Frances Eleanor Trollope, The Graphic, 1890. Getty Images Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Limited. The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom In memory of my grandmothers, Ivy Hartley and Margaret Alicia Kealy Contents

List of Figures xi Series Editors’ Preface xii Acknowledgements xiii Notes on Contributors xiv Chronology by Pamela Wolpert xviii

Introduction: The ‘Business’ of Writing Women 1 Lucy Hartley Part I Divisions of Writing 1 The Feminisation of Literary Culture 23 Joanne Shattock 2 Gender, Authorship, and the Periodical Press 39 Alexis Easley 3 The Professional Woman Writer 56 Linda K. Hughes Part II Reading Places 4 Mapping the Nation: Scotland and Britain 73 Suzanne Gilbert 5 Representing Ireland 91 Margaret Kelleher 6 Runaway Discourse: Women Write Slavery, Race, and Empire 107 Cora Kaplan 7 Women Writers and the Provincial Novel 125 Josephine McDonagh 8 Library Lives of Women 143 Susan David Bernstein Part III Writing Genres 9 Travel Writing 163 Ella Dzelzainis 10 Religious Genres 178 Julie Melnyk

ix x Contents

11 Women Playwrights and the London Stage 196 Sharon Aronofsky Weltman 12 Life Writing 212 Valerie Sanders 13 Scientific and Medical Genres 229 Claire Brock Part IV Reading Women Writing Modernity 14 Creativity 247 Alison Chapman 15 Sensation, Art, and Capital 264 Lucy Hartley 16 Writing across the Class Divide 282 Florence S. Boos 17 Friendship and Intimacy 303 Jill Rappoport 18 Sympathy 320 Carolyn Burdett

Select Critical Bibliography 336 Index 344 List of Figures

2.1 Ngram for ‘Authoress’, 1800–1900. Google Ngram Viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams 42 2.2 Matt Morgan, ‘“The Girl of the Period!” Or, Painted by a Prurient Prude’, Tomahawk, 2 (4 April 1868), p. 139 50 7.1 R. Westall, engraved by C. Heath, ‘The Parting Charge’, Forget Me Not (London: R. Ackerman, 1825), p. 55. Reproduced by kind permission of the London Library 132 7.2 Henry Corbould, engraved by George Corbould, ‘Sacontala’, Forget Me Not (London: R. Ackerman, 1825), p. 198. Reproduced by kind permission of Senate House Library, University of London 133 15.1 William Powell Frith, Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1865), oil on canvas, 91.4 x 71.8 cm, NPG 4478. © National Portrait Gallery, London 278

xi Series Editor’s Preface

One of the most significant developments in literary studies in the last quarter of a century has been the remarkable growth of scholarship on women’s writing. This was inspired by, and in turn provided inspiration for, a post-war women’s movement, which saw women’s cultural expres- sion as key to their emancipation. The retrieval, republication and reap- praisal of women’s writing, beginning in the mid-1960s have radically affected the literary curriculum in schools and universities. A revised canon now includes many more women writers. Literature courses that focus on what women thought and wrote from antiquity onwards have become popular undergraduate and postgraduate options. These new initiatives have meant that gender – in language, authors, texts, audience, and in the history of print culture more generally – is a central question for literary criticism and literary history. A mass of fascinating research and analysis extending over several decades now stands as testimony to a lively and diverse set of debates, in an area of work that is still expanding. Indeed so rapid has this expansion been that it has become increasingly difficult for students and academics to have a comprehensive view of the wider field of women’s writing outside their own period or specialism. As the research on women has moved from the margins to the confident cen- tre of literary studies it has become rich in essays and monographs dealing with smaller groups of authors, with particular genres, and with defined periods of literary production, reflecting the divisions of intellectual labour and development of expertise that are typical of the discipline of literary studies. Collections of essays that provide overviews within particular peri- ods and genres do exist, but no published series has taken on the mapping of the field even within one language group or national culture. A History of British Women’s Writing is intended as just such a cartographic standard work. Its ambition is to provide, in ten volumes edited by lead- ing experts in the field, and comprised of newly commissioned essays by specialist scholars, a clear and integrated picture of women’s contribution to the world of letters within Great Britain from medieval times to the present. In taking on such a wide-ranging project we were inspired by the founding, in 2003, of Chawton House Library, a UK registered charity with a unique collection of books focusing on women’s writing in English from 1600 to 1830, set in the home and working estate of Jane Austen’s brother. Jennie Batchelor University of Kent Cora Kaplan Queen Mary, University of London xii Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the support of Jennie Batchelor and Cora Kaplan, the General Editors of this series, throughout the production of the vol- ume. The helpfulness, generosity, and patience of Jennie and Cora were much appreciated—and sometimes much needed—and it has been a pleas- ure to work with them. I also wish to acknowledge the incisive feedback from the anonymous external readers, which proved valuable in revis- ing the volume, and the consummate professionalism of Ben Doyle, Eva Hodgkin, and Camille Davies at Palgrave Macmillan. I owe special thanks to two graduate students at the University of Michigan: Pamela Wolpert, for compiling the chronology and the index, and Ani Bezirdzhyan, for pre- paring the select bibliography. I also wish to extend personal thanks to my family—Keith and Winifred, Adam, Rachel, Oliver, and Imogen, Cecilia, Martyn, Matthew, Katie, and Sophie—and to the Department of English at the University of Michigan, especially the wonderful staff who keep every- thing together and keep smiling. Above all, I am indebted to the contribu- tors to this volume, a terrific group of women who have written essays that individually and collectively attest to the power of women’s writing in the nineteenth century, and in the present. It is with immense sadness that I need to record the death of Julie Melnyk. Julie was a wonderful collaborator, both enthusiastic about the volume and diligent in delivering her essay on time. Above all, Julie was committed to bringing attention to the religious writings of Victorian women; her final essay is thus a fitting, albeit poignant, testament to that commitment.

xiii Notes on Contributors

Susan David Bernstein is Research Professor of English at Boston University. Her publications include: Roomscape: Women Writers in the British Museum from to Virginia Woolf (2013), Confessional Subjects: Revelations of Gender and Power in Victorian Literature and Culture (1997), and Victorian Vulgarity: Taste in Verbal and Visual Culture, co-edited with Elsie B. Mitchie (2009). Florence S. Boos is Professor of English at the University of Iowa. The gen- eral editor of the William Morris Archive, she has published several criti- cal works on William Morris, most recently History and Poetics in the Early Writings of William Morris, 1856–1870 (2015). Her Working-Class Women Poets of Victorian Britain: An Anthology appeared in 2008, and Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women: The Hard Way Up in 2017 from Palgrave. Claire Brock is Associate Professor in the School of Arts at the University of Leicester. She is the author of three monographs: the Wellcome-Trust-funded British Women Surgeons and their Patients, 1860–1918 (2017); The Comet Sweeper: Caroline Herschel’s Astronomical Ambition (2007; reissued 2017); and The Feminisation of Fame, 1750–1830 (2006). Carolyn Burdett is Senior Lecturer in English and Victorian Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She is General Editor of the journal 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, https://www.19.bbk. ac.uk/. Her publications include: Olive Schreiner (Writers and their Work) (2013); Olive Schreiner and the Progress of Feminism: Evolution, Gender, Empire (2001); and The Victorian Supernatural, co-edited with Nicola Bown and Pamela Thurschwell (2004). Her current book project is Forming Empathy: Psychology, Ethics, Aesthetics 1870–1920. Alison Chapman is Professor of English at the University of Victoria. Her published work includes two monographs, Networking the Nation: British and American Poetry and Italy, 1840–1870 (2014) and The Afterlife of Christina Rossetti (2001); a co-authored book with Joanna Meacock, A Rossetti Family Chronology (2007); and three edited collections of essays, Victorian Women Poets (2003), Unfolding the South: Nineteenth-Century British and Writers in Italy, co-edited with Jane Stabler (2003), and A Companion to Victorian Poetry, co-edited with Richard Cronin and Antony H. Harrison (2002). She is also editor of the in-progress Database of Victorian Periodical Poetry.

xiv Notes on Contributors xv

Ella Dzelzainis is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Newcastle University. She has published a number of essays on the relationship between literature, feminism and economic history in the period. She is co- editor with Cora Kaplan of : Authorship, Society and Empire (2010) and with Ruth Livesey of The American Experiment and the Idea of America in British Culture, 1776–1914 (2013). She has a particular interest in the impact of T. R. Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) on literary and cultural representations of women in the long nineteenth century. Alexis Easley is Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas. She is the author of First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media, 1830–70 (2004) and Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850–1914 (2011). She co-edited The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century Periodicals and Newspapers and Researching the Nineteenth- Century Periodical Press: Case Studies (2016, 2017), with Andrew King and John Morton. She also edits Victorian Periodicals Review. Suzanne Gilbert is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Stirling. She shares with Ian Duncan the general editorship of the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of The Collected Works of James Hogg and has served as volume editor of three titles in the series. She writes on eight- eenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish literature, women’s writing and ‘traditional literatures’, particularly ballads. Lucy Hartley is Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, and previously taught at the University of Southampton. She is the author of Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture (2001, 2006) and Democ- ratising Beauty in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Art and the Politics of Public Life (2017). Her current book project is a biography of a radical social move- ment entitled Poverty and Progress: The Whitechapel Project of Henrietta and Samuel Barnett. Linda K. Hughes is Addie Levy Professor of Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas Christian University. She is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women’s Poetry (2018), co-editor with Julie Codell of Replication in the Long Nineteenth Century: Re-makings and Reproductions (2018) and with Sharon M. Harris of A Feminist Reader: Feminist Thought from Sappho to Satrapi (2013), and author of The Cambridge Introduction to Victorian Poetry (2010) with Graham R. Rosamund and Marriott Watson; and The Victorian Serial (1991) and Victorian Publishing and Mrs. Gaskell’s Work (1999), with Michael Lund. xvi Notes on Contributors

Cora Kaplan is Professor Emerita of English at Southampton University and Honorary Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London. A General Editor of this series, her publications include Genders, with David Glover (2000, 2009), and Victoriana—Histories, Fictions, Criticism (2007). Co-editor with John Oldfield of Imagining Transatlantic Slavery (2009), she writes widely on empire, race, and representation in nineteenth-century Britain. Margaret Kelleher is Professor and Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College Dublin. Her books include The Feminization of Famine (1997), The Cambridge History of Irish Literature (2006), co-edited with Philip O’Leary, and Ireland and Quebec: Interdisciplinary Essays on History, Culture and Society (2016), co-edited with Michael Kenneally. She was a contributing editor to Field Day Anthology, volumes 4 and 5, on Irish women’s writings. Her forthcoming monograph is a cultural history of lan- guage change in late nineteenth-century Ireland, focusing on the infamous 1882 Maamtrasna Murders, and in 2017 she guest-edited a special issue of the journal Éire-Ireland on the topic of Ireland and the contemporary. Josephine McDonagh is Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, University of Chicago, having previously taught at King’s College London, the University of Oxford and Birkbeck College, University of London. She is author of De Quincey’s Disciplines (1994), George Eliot (1997) and Child Murder and British Culture 1720–1900 (2003), and has co-edited a number of volumes, most recently Nineteenth-Century Radical Traditions (2016) with Joseph Bristow, and Commodities and Culture in the Colonial World (2017) with Supriya Chaudhuri, Brian Murray, and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan. Her study of literature and migration in the nineteenth cen- tury is in process. Julie Melnyk taught in the English Department at the University of Missouri. She was the author of Victorian Religion: Faith and Life in Britain (2008) and editor of Women’s Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (1998). She also co-edited two volumes of scholarly essays: ‘Perplext in Faith’: Essays on Victorian Beliefs and Doubts (2015) and Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century (2001). Jill Rappoport is Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Giving Women: Alliance and Exchange in Victorian Culture (2012) and co-editor of Economic Women: Essays on Desire and Dispossession in Nineteenth-Century British Culture (2013), with Lana L. Dalley. Her current work, on married women’s property reform, has appeared most recently in Victorian Studies. Valerie Sanders is Professor of English at the University of Hull. She is currently writing a monograph on Margaret Oliphant for Edward Everett Notes on Contributors xvii

Root’s Key Popular Women Writers series, and has edited two volumes of Records of Girlhood (2000 and 2012), anthologies of nineteenth-century women’s childhoods. Other recent publications include The Tragi-Comedy of Victorian Fatherhood (2009), and edited volumes of Oliphant’s periodical articles and novel Hester in Pickering and Chatto’s Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant. Joanne Shattock is Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Leicester. She has recently published, with Elisabeth Jay, a 26-volume edition of the Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant (2011–16), and before that edited The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (2005–6). She publishes on nineteenth-women’s writing, on the periodical press and on book history. A collection of essays on Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth- Century Britain was published in 2017. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman is William E. Davis Alumni Professor of English at Louisiana State University and the North American editor of Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film. Her books are: Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science, and Education (2007) and Ruskin’s Mythic Queen: Gender Subversion in Victorian Culture (1999). In addition to many book chapters and articles, she has guest-edited issues of Nineteenth- Century Prose in 2008 and Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film in 2012; the latter is a scholarly edition of the 1847 melodrama Sweeney Todd. Her cur- rent book project examines Broadway musicals adapted from Victorian literature, and she has a major essay on Elizabeth Polack forthcoming in Victorian Literature and Culture. Chronology by Pamela Wolpert

Year Events Works 1830 Death of George IV; William IV assumes the throne 1831 Defeat of first and second Reform Mary Prince, The History of Bills is followed by introduction Mary Prince; Mary Shelley, of Third Reform Bill; great cholera Frankenstein, third edition pandemic; Ten Hours Movement (substantially revised from begins; chloroform invented 1818) 1832 Representation of the People Act Anna Jameson, Characteristics (also known as the First Reform of Women; Francis Trollope, Act) passes and doubles eligible Domestic Manners of the voters to 1 million men Americans; Harriet Martineau, Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–4) 1833 Report on the Employment of Children in Factories; Factory Act restricts working hours for children in the textile industry and forbids employment of those under age 9; British Emancipation Act (also known as the Slavery Abolition Act) passes, but takes effect on 1 August 1834, ending slavery in the British Empire; formation of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act; Sara Coleridge, Pretty Lessons Children’s Friend Society begins in Verse for Good Children sending ‘vagrant’ children between the ages of nine and twelve to Cape Colony 1835 London Society for the Protection Mary Shelley, Lodore; Eliza of Young Females Cook, Lays of a Wild Harp; Emma Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindustan

(Continued)

xviii Chronology by Pamela Wolpert xix

Year Events Works 1836 The People’s Charter marks Anna Eliza Bray, A Description the beginning of the Chartist of the Part of Devonshire Movement and campaign for Bordering on the Tamar and universal suffrage; Boer settlers in the Tavy; , South Africa begin ‘Great Trek’; A Voice from the Factories; Marriage Act makes Nonconformist Elizabeth Gaskell and and Roman Catholic ceremonies William Gaskell, Sketches legally binding; Factory Act restricts Among the Poor; Catherine work for children under thirteen to Parr Traill, The Backwoods of no more than forty-eight hours per Canada week; proposes a ladies pledge to support Early Closing Movement for shops 1837 Death of William IV; eighteen- L. E. L., The Marriage Vow; year-old Victoria becomes Queen Harriet Martineau, Society in of the United Kingdom of Great America; Britain and Ireland; official birth Mary Shelley, Falkner registration introduced in England and Wales 1838 Anti-Corn Law League established Lady Charlotte Guest, The by Richard Cobden and John Mabinogion (first translation Bright; regular New York–London into English); Anna Jameson, steam service begins; First Afghan Winter Studies and Summer War begins; Louis Daguerre and Rambles in Canada; Harriet Henry Fox Talbot introduce rival Martineau, Retrospect of methods of photography (1838– Western Travel, How to Observe 9); the National Gallery moves to Morals and Manners and Trafalgar Square in London Deerbrook 1839 Chartist protests; Custody of Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Infants Act ends absolute control Women of England: Their of husbands over their children’s Social Duties, and Domestic custody; Metropolitan Police Act Habits; Sarah Lewis, forbids prostitutes from loitering; Women’s Mission electrotyping enables rapid mass printing; First Anglo-Chinese Opium War begins

(Continued) xx Chronology by Pamela Wolpert

Year Events Works 1840 Queen Victoria marries Prince Francis Trollope, The Life and Albert; penny postage established; Adventures of Michael Elizabeth Fry founds home to Armstrong, the Factory train nurses Boy; Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland begin Lives of the Queens of England (1840–8) 1841 Population: 18.5 million; Catherine Gore, Cecil, or literacy: males 67.3%, females Adventures of a Coxcomb 51.1%; Governesses Benevolent and Cecil, A Peer; Charlotte Institution; the Countess of Elizabeth Tonna, Personal Blessington becomes editor of The Recollections; Anne Katherine Keepsake Elwood, Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England 1842 Treaty of Nanking ends First Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Anglo-Chinese War with China Daughters of England; Their ceding Hong Kong to Britain; Position in Society, Character First Afghan War ends; Edwin and Responsibilities; Mary Ann Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary Stodart, Female Writers, Condition of the Labouring Thoughts on their Proper Sphere Population; Chartist riots in indus- and Powers of Usefulness trial areas; Copyright Act extends term to forty-two years, or seven years after author’s death; Charles Edward Mudie starts to lend books for a fee through a circulating library 1843 The Economist Weekly Commercial Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Times first published; Maori revolt Mothers of England; Their in New Zealand; Association for Infl uence and Responsibility the Aid and Benefit of Milliners and The Wives of England: and Dressmakers Their Relative Duties, Domestic Infl uence and Social Obligations; Anna Jameson, Woman’s Mission and Woman’s Position (Continued) Chronology by Pamela Wolpert xxi

Year Events Works 1844 Public bath houses open in Britain Elizabeth Barrett, Poems; for the first time; Factory Act Harriet Martineau, Life in restricts working day to twelve the Sick Room; or, Essays by hours for women and children an Invalid; Elizabeth Missing under eighteen; Society for the Sewell, Amy Herbert; Charlotte Prevention of Cruelty to Children; Elizabeth Tonna, The Wrongs Catherine Gore wins competition of Woman for best comedy, Quid Pro Quo, at the Royal Theatre, Haymarket 1845 John Franklin searches for the Mary Howitt, My Own Story, Northwest Passage; first Anglo- or The Autobiography of a Sikh War begins; famine in Child; Harriet Martineau, Ireland due to failure of potato Letters on Mesmerism; crop: c. 750,000 people died and Elizabeth Rigby, Lady c. 2 million emigrated Travellers; Anna Jameson, Early Italian Painters 1846 Corn Laws repealed; Mary Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, Carpenter opens ‘ragged school’; Poems; Mary Ann Evans state-financed pupil-teacher (George Eliot), trans. The Life system begins of Jesus, Critically Examined by David Strauss 1847 Communist League founded; Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey; Ignaz Semmelweis discovers that Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; infection causes childbed fever; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Factory Act restricts working day Heights; Elizabeth Missing to 10 hours for women and chil- Sewell, Margaret Percival; dren; first use of chloroform as Christina Rossetti, Verses: anaesthetic; publication of Dedicated to Her Mother (pri- pamphlet on women’s suffrage; vately printed) series of lectures for ladies estab- lished by lecturers at King’s College, London; Mary Howitt and William Howitt launch Howitt’s Journal

(Continued) xxii Chronology by Pamela Wolpert

Year Events Works 1848 Revolt and revolution across Anne Brontë, The Tenant Europe; Louis-Philippe relin- of Wildfell Hall; Elizabeth quishes monarchy in France and Gaskell, Mary Barton; Harriet Louis Napoleon is elected presi- Martineau, Eastern Life, dent of the new republic; Public Present and Past; Elizabeth Health Act; Rigby, ‘Review of Jane Eyre’; founds Saint John’s House to train Anna Jameson, Sacred and nurses; Queen’s College founded Legendary Art to train governesses; First US Women’s Rights Convention; Second Anglo-Sikh War begins; formation of Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) 1849 Bedford College for Women Eliza Cook, Our Women founded in London; cholera epi- Servants; Dinah Mulock demic; Eliza Cook launches Eliza Craik, The Olgivies; Geraldine Cook’s Journal Jewsbury, Religious Faith; Margaret Oliphant, Passages in the Life of Margaret Maitland; Harriet Martineau begins History of the Thirty Years’ Peace 1816–1846 1850 Public Libraries Act; Frances Buss Elizabeth Barrett Browning, founds North London Collegiate Poems; Dinah Mulock Craik, School for Girls; first day nursery; Olive; Maria G. Grey and Caroline Chisholm founds Family Emily Shirreff, Thoughts on Colonisation Loan Society; simple Self-Culture, Addressed to gas burner invented; PRB launches Women; Catherine-Anne The Germ Hubback, The Younger Sister 1851 Population: 20.8 million, with Mary Carpenter, Reformatory census revealing more than 50% Schools for the Children of living in towns and cities, 40% the Perishing and Dangerous of women between the ages of Classes, and for Juvenile twenty and forty-four are single, Offenders; Dinah Mulock 13.3% of employed people are Craik, The Head of the Family; domestic servants, and 21,000 Margaret Oliphant, Caleb women list their occupation as Field; Elizabeth Barrett governess; The Great Exhibition Browning, Casa Guidi opens at Hyde Park in London; Windows Louis Napoleon suspends

(Continued) Chronology by Pamela Wolpert xxiii

Year Events Works constitution and appoints himself Emperor; first petition by women for the franchise submitted to the House of Lords; Cape Colony– Xhosa War; Isaac Singer invents the sewing machine; Charlotte M. Yonge launches The Monthly Packet 1852 The Museum of Manufactures Susanna Moodie, Roughing it established; Englishwoman’s in the Bush Domestic Magazine launched; Eliza Lynn Linton joins the staff of The Morning Chronicle 1853 Queen Victoria allows chloro- Charlotte Brontë, Villette; form to be administered during Dinah Mulock Craik, Agatha’s the birth of her seventh child; Husband; Elizabeth Gaskell, smallpox vaccination made Cranford and Ruth; Caroline compulsory; soap tax abol- Norton, English Laws for ished; Crimean War begins, with Women; Charlotte M. Yonge, leading the The Heir of Redclyffe volunteer nurses; British Medical Association 1854 Dorothea Beale introduces sci- Anna Eliza Bray, A Peep at the ence curriculum at Cheltenham Pixies, or Legends of the West Ladies’ College; Mary Carpenter opens Red Lodge Reform School for Girls; Drysdale’s Elements of Social Science recommends use of vinegar-soaked sponge as contraceptive 1855 Daily Telegraph begins publication; Barbara Leigh Smith Nightingale introduces hygienic Bodichon, Women and Work; standards into military hospi- Elizabeth Gaskell, North and tals; Young Women’s Christian South; Margaret Oliphant, Association; Newspaper Stamp Act Modern Novelists; Charlotte repealed M. Yonge, The Railroad Children

(Continued) xxiv Chronology by Pamela Wolpert

Year Events Works 1856 Children’s Aid Society; St. John’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning, House takes over provision of Aurora Leigh; Dinah nursing services for King’s College Mulock Craik, John Halifax, Hospital; County and Borough Gentleman; Isabella Bird, The Police Act Englishwomen in America; Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Education of Character; With Hints on Moral Training; Anna Jameson, The Communion of Labour; Charlotte M. Yonge, The Daisy Chain, or, Aspirations; Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’ 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act makes Charlotte Brontë, The it possible to obtain a divorce Professor; Elizabeth Gaskell, through the law courts; Indian The Life of Charlotte Bronte; Rebellion (also known as the Sepoy Mary Jane Seacole, Wonderful Rebellion, the Indian Mutiny, the Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in First War of Indian Independence); Many Lands the Museum of Manufactures moves and is renamed the South Kensington Museum; Association for the Promotion of Employment of Women; launch of Englishwoman’s Review; Ellen Ranyard employs working-class ‘bible-women’ to visit the poor in St. Giles parish, London; Obscene Publications Act; The Lancet esti- mates that one house in every sixty in London is a brothel 1858 East India Company’s powers Dinah Mulock Craik, A transferred to the British Crown; Woman’s Thoughts about beginning of women’s struggle to Women; George Eliot, Scenes be licensed to practise medicine; of Clerical Life first Visiting Nurse Society organ- ized in Liverpool; Female

(Continued) Chronology by Pamela Wolpert xxv

Year Events Works Mission to the Fallen; Louisa Twining founds the Workhouse Visiting Society; Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Raynes Parkes establish the English Woman’s Journal; reli- gious test and property qualifica- tion for Parliament removed 1859 George Eliot, Adam Bede; Dinah Mulock Craik, A Life for a Life; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty; Julia Horatia Ewing, Aunty Judy’s Tales; Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species; Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing 1860 Nightingale School for Nurses George Eliot, The Mill on the opens; Emily Faithful establishes Floss Victoria Press 1861 Population: 23 million, with Isabella Beeton, Book of 14.6% of employed population in Household Management; domestic service and 2000 women Adelaide Proctor, A Woman’s listed in clerical occupations; lit- Last Word; Jane Ysgafell eracy: male 75.4%, female 65.3%; Williams, The Literary Women unification of Italy and Victor of England; Ellen Wood (Mrs. Emmanuel becomes king; death Henry Wood), East Lynne of Prince Albert; Nightingale Fund begins sponsoring train- ing of midwives at King’s College Hospital; American Civil War begins 1862 Emancipation proclamation in Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady America; Otto von Bismarck Audley’s Secret; Julia Horatia becomes Prime Minister of Ewing, Aunt Judy’s Letters; Prussia; Female Middle Class Christina Rossetti, Goblin Emigration Society; cotton fam- Market, and Other Poems; ine (as result of American Civil Elizabeth Barrett Browning, War) leads to hardship in textile Last Poems (posthumous) industry

(Continued) xxvi Chronology by Pamela Wolpert

Year Events Works 1863 Girls admitted to Cambridge Mary Elizabeth Braddon, local examination; construction Aurora Floyd; Hannah of London Underground railway Cullwick, Diary; George Eliot, begins; Emily Faithful establishes Romola; Elizabeth Gaskell, and edits Victoria Magazine Sylvia’s Lover; Francis Anne Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation; Caroline Norton, Lost and Saved; Ouida, Held in Bondage and Verner’s Pride; Julia Kavanagh, English Women of Letters 1864 First Geneva Convention; Octavia J. S. Le Fanu, Uncle Silas; Hill begins tenement-dwelling Margaret Oliphant, reforms; Parliamentary paper Autobiography reports dressmakers pay is gen- erally too low for survival; first Contagious Diseases Act 1865 End of American Civil War; J. S. Le Fanu, Guy Deverell; Morant Bay Rebellion (also known Ouida, Strathmore; John as the Jamaica Rebellion) followed Ruskin, ‘Of Queen’s Gardens’; by the Governor Eyre contro- , versy; John Stuart Mill elected Principles of Education Drawn to Parliament with support from from Nature and Revelation and women volunteers; Joseph Lister applied to in starts antiseptic surgery; Elizabeth the Upper Classes; Charlotte Garrett becomes first woman to M. Yonge, The Clever Woman obtain licence to practise medi- of the Family cine; Ellen Wood buys and edits the Argosy 1866 Dr. T. J. Barnardo opens home Margaret Oliphant, Miss for destitute children; Woman’s Majoribanks; Ouida, Chandos; Suffrage Committee formed by Augusta Webster, Dramatic Bodichon and Millicent Garrett Studies Fawcett; Englishwoman’s Review of Social and Industrial Questions begins publication; last cholera epidemic; second Contagious Diseases Act; Mary Elizabeth Braddon founds and edits Belgravia (Continued) Chronology by Pamela Wolpert xxvii

Year Events Works 1867 Second Reform Act passed without Ellen Johnston, Autobiography amendment (introduced by Mill) and A Mother’s Love; Ouida, to extend suffrage to women; Idalia and Under Two Flags; British North America Act; Factory Augusta Webster, A Woman Extension Act; girls admitted to Sold, and Other Poems Oxford local examinations 1868 Last public hanging Josephine Butler, The Education and Employment of Women; Eliza Lynn Linton, La Femme Passée and ‘The Girl of the Period’ 1869 Girton College in Cambridge Josephine Butler, Women’s established for women; imprison- Work and Women’s Culture; ment for debt abolished; single Sarah Stickney Ellis, The property-owning women vote Education of the Heart: in elections for parish officials; Women’s Best Work; Charles third Contagious Diseases Act; Kingsley, ‘The Emancipation Josephine Butler begins campaign of Women’; John Stuart Mill, against Contagious Diseases Acts The Subjection of Women; Margaret Oliphant, ‘Review of A Subjection of Women’ 1870 First Married Women’s Property , The Act; Elementary Education Act; Brownies and Other Tales; Cambridge University starts uni- Millicent Garrett Fawcett, versity extension lectures in four Political Economy for Beginners; cities with access for women; Augusta Webster, Portraits Franco-Prussian War begins; founds the Women’s Suffrage Journal 1871 Population: 26 million; literacy: Frances Power Cobbe, To male 80.6%, female 73.2%; Paris Elizabeth Garrett Anderson; Commune; trade unions legalised; , Women’s Universities Tests Acts Work

(Continued) xxviii Chronology by Pamela Wolpert

Year Events Works 1872 National Society for Women’s George Eliot, Middlemarch; Suffrage founded; first woman Sophia Jex-Blake, Medicine elected to school board; strikes as a Profession for Women; by police, bakers, gas workers in Frances Power Cobbe, London; lawn tennis popularised Darwinism in Morals and as mixed-sex sport; Fortnightly Other Essays; Millicent Review prints article in favour Garrett Fawcett (with Henry of birth control; Edinburgh Fawcett), Essays and Lectures Upholsterers’ Sewers Society, an on Social and Political Subjects; all-woman trade union; Ballot Act Octavia Hill, Further Account of the Walmer Street Industrial Experiment; Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme-Book 1873 First women admitted unofficially to Cambridge University examina- tions; Girls’s Public Day School Company opens first school; Mrs. Nassau Senior appointed first female Poor Law Inspector; Social Purity Alliance; National Union of Working Women formed by Emma Paterson; E. Remington and Sons begins producing typewriters 1874 Factory Act restricts the working Annie Besant, The Political week to fifty-six hours for men Status of Women; Millicent and women Garrett Fawcett, Tales in Political Economy; Ouida, Pascarel; Christina Rossetti, Annus Domini: A Prayer for Each Day of the Year 1875 London Medical School for Isabella Bird, A Lady’s Life Women; age of consent raised to in the Rocky Mountains; thirteen; Martha Merrington, in Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Kensington, becomes first woman The Sexes through Nature; elected as Poor Law Guardian; Millicent Garrett Fawcett Newnham Hall in Cambridge Janet Doncaster; Ouida, Signa; opened for women Alice Thompson (Meynell), Preludes

(Continued) Chronology by Pamela Wolpert xxix

Year Events Works 1876 Trial of Annie Besant and Charles George Eliot, Daniel Deronda; Bradlaugh for publishing pam- Margaret Oliphant, Phoebe phlet on birth control; Emma Junior and The Makers of Paterson and Edith Simcox Florence become first women delegates to Trades Union Congress; school boards authorise school meals in poor neighborhoods; birth rate peaks at 36.6/1000 population; British Women’s Temperance Association 1877 Queen Victoria named Empress Annie Besant, The Law of of India; the Grosvenor Gallery Population; Francis Power opens; Teacher’s Training and Cobbe, Why Women Desire the Registration Society opens teach- Franchise; Amelia Edwards, ers’ training college; Sophia A Thousand Miles up the Nile; Jex-Blake completes medical stud- Octavia Hill, Our Common ies at University of Edinburgh Land (and Other Short and is admitted to practice; Essays); Harriet Martineau, first All England Lawn Tennis Autobiography; , Championship Black Beauty 1878 Factory Act applies Factory Code Annie Besant, Marriage As to all trades and eliminates the It Was, As It Is, As It Should employment of children under Be; A Plea for Reform; Francis the age of ten; Catherine and Power Cobbe, Wife Torture William Booth found Salvation in England; Francis Anne Army; London University opens Kemble, Records of a Girlhood; all degrees and prizes to women; Ouida, Friendship Second Anglo-Afghan War begins 1879 Anglo-Zulu War; public granted Julia Horatia Ewing, unrestricted admission to the Jackanapes British Museum 1880 Parcel post introduced; Religious Isabella Bird Bishop, Unbeaten Tract Society launches The Girl’s Tracks in Japan Own Paper; launch of The Lady’s Pictorial