Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Josephine Butler
-
Standard Name: Butler, Josephine
Birth Name: Josephine Elizabeth Grey
Married Name: Josephine Elizabeth Butler
Used Form: an English mother
Used Form: the author of the Memoir of John Grey of Dilston
Social reformer JB
is primarily remembered for her unrelenting efforts in the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts during the second half of the nineteenth century. She was both a gifted orator and a prolific writer on the many causes she espoused. Author of nearly forty pamphlets, she also composed books of political and personal writings: essays, biographies of people whose lives influenced her own, and an autobiography. Almost all of her writings address questions of social and political import—the repeal campaign, the double sexual standard, women's rights, and religious issues.
Petrie, Glen. A Singular Iniquity: The Campaigns of Josephine Butler. Macmillan.
Through this work MGF
met Josephine Butler
, whom she greatly admired.
Friends, Associates
Julia Wedgwood
As a direct result of such work, she became a friend of such women as Josephine Butler
and Frances Power Cobbe
.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Friends, Associates
Isabella Ormston Ford
Through her mother's connection with the women's movement of the mid-Victorian period, IOF
met Millicent Garrett Fawcett
and her sister Agnes Garrett
, with whom Isabella and her sister Bessie became close friends and correspondents...
Friends, Associates
Dora Greenwell
In Lancashire she became friendly with Josephine Butler
.
Bett, Henry. Dora Greenwell. Epworth Press.
16
Dorling, William. Memoirs of Dora Greenwell. James Clarke.
Partly through her membership of the Kensington Society
(a social and political discussion group of about fifty women inaugurated in 1865), JB
broadened her acquaintance with significant members of the feminist movement, including Frances Power Cobbe
Emily, born five years ahead of Isabella in 1850, attended the Slade School of Art
in the late 1870s and became a painter well-known in the Leeds community. Like IOF
, she also became a...
Family and Intimate relationships
Annie Besant
AB
's husband
took up a post as an assistant mathematics master at Cheltenham College
, a public school for boys in Gloucestershire.
Josephine Butler
had moved from Cheltenham just before AB
's arrival.
Taylor, Anne. Annie Besant: A Biography. Oxford University Press.
29
Taylor, Anne. Annie Besant: A Biography. Oxford University Press.
28-9
Education
Sarah Grand
Her attendance was made possible by a bequest left to her by a great-aunt.
Grand, Sarah. “Introduction; Chronology”. Sex, Social Purity and Sarah Grand: Volume 2, edited by Stephanie Forward, Routledge, pp. 1 - 12; 13.
13
SG
was not happy at either school, and she describes her experience there as one of deadly dulness.
Grand, Sarah. Sex, Social Purity and Sarah Grand: Volume 1. Editor Heilmann, Ann, Routledge.
194
Dedications
Dora Greenwell
One of DG
's most popular works appeared, a volume of religious essays titled The Patience of Hope, dedicated to Josephine Butler
; she referred to herself allusively as the author of A Present...
Anthologization
Jessie Boucherett
JB
's essay How to Provide for Superfluous Women appeared in Josephine Butler
's Woman's Work and Woman's Culture.
Hays, Frances. Women of the Day. Chatto and Windus.
26
Anthologization
Sophia Jex-Blake
At the request of her publisher Macmillan, SJB
contributed an essay on Medicine as a Profession for Women to Josephine Butler
's Woman's Work and Woman's Culture. She was friendly with Butler and...