Isabella Banks

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Standard Name: Banks, Isabella
Birth Name: Isabella Varley
Married Name: Isabella Banks
Used Form: Mrs G. Linnaeus Banks
IB was a prolific author first of poetry, then of journalism, and later of many novels. She was well-known as a regional novelist, setting many of her books in early nineteenth-century Manchester and the north of England. Her novels and poetry exhibit several instances of an overall belief in the march of progress, with strong messages about how England has advanced during the Victorian period, along with exhortations to the working class to improve their lot through hard work and duty.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Isabella Banks by Done and Ball of London. She has her head slightly tilted under a hat with frill edges and bows for ornament, with a large one under her chin holding it on. She has grey hair and thin wire-framed glasses.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Anna Kingsford
While lecturing at the Zetetical Society , AK may have met Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb .
Pert, Alan. Red Cactus: The Life of Anna Kingsford. Books and Writers, 2006.
91
Through her interest in theosophy she became close to Marie, Countess of Caithness (later Duchess of Pomar)...
Textual Production Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The monthly, intended to compete with the Cornhill and Temple Bar (which Maxwell had just sold) cost one shilling, and was aimed at the lower middle classes. MEB 's Birds of Prey, Bound to...

Timeline

Before 20 September 1653
Humphrey Chetham planned the organisation which, after his death on this date, opened as the first public library in the modern world: Chetham's Library in Manchester (sometimes known as Cheetham's ).
July 1889
Women's Suffrage: A Reply appeared in the Fortnightly Review to counter Mary Augusta Ward 's Appeal Against Female Suffrage in the previous month's Nineteenth Century.