MC
, until recently very little remembered, caused a sensation in 1888 with her articles calling for reform in marriage practices. She was already at that date a published novelist, and went on issuing novels until 1931, the year before her death, as well as essays, short stories, travel writing, and journalism. She was an important member of the group of New Woman writers of the 1890s, and campaigned in fiction and non-fiction for a group of related causes: improved status for women (in education, marriage, divorce, child-rearing, job opportunities, and voting rights), anti-vivisection, pacificism, and international co-operation. She was a writer of high intellectual ability, and her characteristic tone is trenchant, satirical, and often bleakly comic.