Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sarah Grand
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Standard Name: Grand, Sarah
Birth Name: Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke
Married Name: Frances Elizabeth Bellenden McFall
Indexed Name: Frances E. McFall
Pseudonym: Sarah Grand
Nickname: Madame Grand
SG
is known as a late nineteenth-century women's rights campaigner and social reformer. She claimed to have coined the term New Woman in her article The New Aspect of the Woman Question, which appeared in the North American Review in March 1894. Her novel Ideala, 1888, was an early example of the New Woman novels which became increasingly popular, if controversial, among both female and male writers at the turn of the century. Her nine novels and three collections of short stories tend toward the didactic; she explicitly acknowledged her belief in writing as instruction rather than as art.
Bonnell, Marilyn. “Sarah Grand and the Critical Establishment: Art for [Wo]man’s Sake”. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Vol.
14
, No. 1, pp. 123-48.
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She also published a pamphlet on male-female relationships, as well as many articles and lectures on gender issues. She never tried to publish the poetry that she wrote for pleasure.
She also educated herself through reading, and while still in her teens was recording her opinion of New Woman novels: Sarah Grand
's The Heavenly Twins, 1893, and Emma Frances Brooke
's A Superfluous...
Education
Elma Napier
In spite of the fact that her family did not value literature as much as games, and that her mother had specific ideas about what girls should read, EN
devoured every book she could get...