Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
-
Standard Name: Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith
Birth Name: Barbara Leigh Smith
Married Name: Barbara Bodichon
BLSB
's literary work emerged from her convictions as a feminist. Her accounts of women's political, legal, and educational disabilities (in lectures, pamphlets, and an important periodical) played a crucial role in mid-Victorian legal reform and the campaigns for improved employment and educational opportunities for women. She also published a travel diary.
MBE
travelled, in company with Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
, through France and Spain to Algeria, particularly Oran.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, p. vi, 354 pp.
233
Travel
Matilda Betham-Edwards
MBE
spent a week with George Eliot
, George Henry Lewes
, and Barbara Bodichon
at an old rectory at Swanmore in the Isle of Wight, which Bodichon had rented for a Christmas holiday.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, p. vi, 354 pp.
250-1
Travel
Jessie White Mario
JWM
left Italy and travelled to St Ives in Cornwall to convalesce in the company of her friend Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
.
Daniels, Elizabeth Adams. Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary. Ohio University Press.
112, 141-2n3
Travel
Bessie Rayner Parkes
BRP
and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
met in Paris intending to return to England together. Instead they rented a chalet together near La Celle St Cloud, a village twelve miles outside the city.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan.
1, 5-6
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
George Eliot
This novel opens at the time of the death of Lorenzo de Medici
, when the Florence that he ruled was riven by conflict among the various political intellectual groupings that supported the new learning...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Harriet Martineau
Female Industry is a wide-ranging review covering the 1851 census results, the reports of Poor Law Commissioners
on women and children in agriculture, the Governesses' Benevolent Institution
, and The Lowell Offering, as well...
Textual Production
Anna Mary Howitt
John Ruskin
's severe censure of a painting intended as her masterpiece (a heroic depiction of Boadiceabrooding over her wrongs, drawn from Barbara Leigh Smith
)
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press.
216
may have impelled AMH
to give up exhibiting her work.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Virago.
43
Woodring, Carl Ray. Victorian Samplers: William and Mary Howitt. University of Kansas Press.
205
Textual Production
Bessie Rayner Parkes
In 1848 BRP
and her friend Barbara Leigh Smith
first began working together to try to publish their writings. Despite an editor's warning not to cast aside the prospect of domestic happiness,
Rendall, Jane. “Friendship and Politics: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes”. Sexuality and Subordination: Interdisciplinary Studies of Gender in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Susan Mendus and Jane Rendall, Routledge, pp. 136-70.
149
Parkes was...
Textual Production
Anna Mary Howitt
Two months later he reported it as attracting much favourable attention when hung at the Portland Gallery
, while AMH
's mother wrote that it was immediately sold, and brought in two commissions.
Woodring, Carl Ray. Victorian Samplers: William and Mary Howitt. University of Kansas Press.
171
One...
Textual Production
Caroline Norton
This was the year of the founding of the Married Women's Property Committee
and of Barbara Leigh Smith
's pamphlet A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women. But...
Textual Production
Jessie Boucherett
During the 1860s JB
wrote a number of articles for the English Woman's Journal, the publication begun by Bessie Rayner Parkes
and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
(and of whose successor journal she was later editor).
Lacey, Candida Ann, editor. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group. Routledge.
225-77
Textual Production
Adelaide Procter
AP
was involved with her reform-minded friends, including Bessie Rayner Parkes
, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
, and Matilda M. Hays
, in helping to found the English Woman's Journal in 1858. She later contributed...
Textual Production
Caroline Frances Cornwallis
She wrote this article at the height of the parliamentary debates on the legal rights of married women. Despite being very ill, CFC
was determined to participate in this discourse and give aid to a...
Textual Features
Matilda Betham-Edwards
She describes here her journey, with a female friend (actually Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
), to Spain with the particular purpose of seeing the works of Velasquez
, and on to North Africa, in the...
Textual Features
Margaret Oliphant
Oliphant's views on the status of women shifted somewhat with time. She dismissed the women's suffrage petition, and represented women who supported suffrage as unnatural. Answering Barbara Bodichon
, she argued that marriage was...
Timeline
1854: Artists Anna Mary Howitt and Barbara Leigh...
Building item
1854
Artists Anna Mary Howitt
and Barbara Leigh Smith
were invited to join the Pre-Raphaelite Portfolio Club
, a group which offered critical appraisals of members' work.
December 1855: Barbara Leigh Smith, later Bodichon, founded...
National or international item
December 1855
Barbara Leigh Smith
, later Bodichon, founded the Married Women's Property Committee
(sometimes called the Women's Committee) to draw up a petition for a married women's property bill.
February 1856: Matthew Davenport Hill distributed Barbara...
February 1856: The Waverley Journal: For the Cultivation...
Writing climate item
February 1856
The Waverley Journal: For the Cultivation of the Honourable, the Progressive and the Beautiful, began fortnightly publication, advertising itself as Edited and published by Ladies.
Harrison, Royden et al. The Warwick Guide to British Labour Periodicals, 1790-1970: A Check List. Harvester Press.
February 1858: Bessie Rayner Parkes described to George...
Building item
February 1858
Bessie Rayner Parkes
described to George Eliot
, in a letter, the limited company established by the Langham Place group to support The English Woman's Journal.
March 1858: The English Woman's Journal, a monthly magazine...
Women writers item
March 1858
The English Woman's Journal, a monthly magazine on the theory and practice of organised feminism, began publication in London, with financial support from Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
and others, under the editorship of...
Late 1859: The offices of The English Woman's Journal...
Women writers item
Late 1859
The offices of The English Woman's Journal moved from Cavendish Square to 19 Langham Place, where a ladies' club was also planned.
August 1864: The English Woman's Journal, a practical...
Building item
August 1864
The English Woman's Journal, a practical and theoretical source of organized feminism from London, merged into The Alexandra Magazine and English Woman's Journal.
23 May 1865: The Kensington Society, a quarterly women's...
Building item
23 May 1865
The Kensington Society
, a quarterly women's discussion group devoted to social and political issues, held its inaugural meeting in London.
7 June 1866: John Stuart Mill presented to the House of...
1868: The report of the Schools Inquiry or Taunton...
National or international item
1868
The report of the Schools Inquiry
or Taunton Commission supported the view of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
, Emily Davies
, and others that girls' education required reform.
18 August 1882: The Married Women's Property Act gave women...
National or international item
18 August 1882
The Married Women's Property Act gave women the right to all the property they earned or acquired before or during marriage.
15, 17 June 2011: The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) released...
Building item
15, 17 June 2011
The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)
released a digitized version of documents, photos, banners, and personal mementoes from the struggle of British women for suffrage, housed at the Women's Library
and the British parliamentary
archives.
Doherty, Teresa. Emails to the Women’s History Network.
Texts
Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith. A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women. John Chapman, 1854.
Bodichon, Eugène. Algeria Considered as a Winter Residence for the English. Editor Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith, English Woman’s Journal Office, 1858.
Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith. An American Diary, 1857-8. Editor Reed, Joseph W., Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.
Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith. “Middle Class Schools for Girls”. English Woman’s Journal.
Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith. Objections to the Enfranchisement of Women Considered. Bale, 1866.
Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith. Reasons For and Against the Enfranchisement of Women. National Society for Women’s Suffrage, 1872.
Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith. Reasons for the Enfranchisement of Women. Chambers of the Social Science Association, 1866.
Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith. “Women and Work”. Waverly Journal.
Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith, and Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Women and Work. C. M. Francis, 1859.
