Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Bessie Rayner Parkes
-
Standard Name: Parkes, Bessie Rayner
Birth Name: Elizabeth Rayner Parkes
Nickname: Bessie
Married Name: Elizabeth Rayner Belloc
Bessie Rayner Parkes (later Belloc)
, a late nineteenth-century feminist, focused her writings especially on issues relating to women's work. During her life she published a collection of miscellaneous essays, a collection of vignettes, numerous articles in periodicals, a travel book, and political treatises. Though her feminist writings have been better recognized, her passion was poetry. She published a lengthy philosophical poem in addition to three volumes of poems, some of which were later compiled into a collection.
Some of her closest friends were prominent feminists, and they were among those soonest willing to flout convention and visit her after her union to Lewes.
Despite the social and spiritual gulf between them, GE
Leisure and Society
George Eliot
When the Leweses celebrated their move to The Priory and their son Charlie's promotion and twenty-first birthday with a party, Clementia Taylor
and one or two other women attended, but Bessie Rayner Parkes
did not...
Intertextuality and Influence
George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans had been reading Das Leben Jesu by David Friedrich Strauss
when she was persuaded by her new circle of liberal friends at Coventry to take on the task of translating it into...
Textual Production
George Eliot
On 3 February 1858 GE
declined an invitation from Bessie Rayner Parkes
to write for the new English Woman's Journal. She explained, in strictest confidence, that she had given up writing articles in order...
Textual Features
George Eliot
This story is equally remarkable for the portraits of Mr Tryan (the Evangelical clergyman who not only converts Janet to his beliefs but succeeds in sparking her will to regeneration) and of Janet herself, but...
Stone, James S. Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women’s Rights. P. D. Meany.
183, 16
Other Life Event
Emily Faithfull
Public interest was heightened by the Codringtons' social status and the sensational details of the case; the trial attracted a high degree of attention. Joseph Parkes
passed on to Bessie Parkes
the rumour that EF
Friends, Associates
Emily Faithfull
EF
suffered in various ways as a result of the trial. The sense that she had prevaricated, at the very least, alienated many of her associates on The English Woman's Journal, including Emily Davies
Textual Production
Emily Faithfull
When EF
went to work at The English Woman's Journal in November 1858, it was under the editorship of Bessie Rayner Parkes
, who had already published poetry and social criticism. When the Victoria Press
Stone, James S. Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women’s Rights. P. D. Meany.
44
Textual Production
Emily Faithfull
Bessie Rayner Parkes
cancelled The English Woman's Journal's printing contract with the Victoria Press
, perhaps aware of the impending divorce trial involving EF
.
Stone, James S. Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women’s Rights. P. D. Meany.
17
politics
Emily Faithfull
Tired of the London social scene, and determined to do some literary work,
Stone, James S. Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women’s Rights. P. D. Meany.
15
EF
began working at The English Woman's Journal, a periodical involved in all aspects of the women's movement, but directly...
politics
Emily Faithfull
By 1859 The English Woman's Journal was felt to be no longer adequate on its own for promoting women's work, and Jessie Boucherett
suggested the creation of a society which would deal specifically with this...
politics
Emily Faithfull
In an effort to encourage women's participation in the printing trade, SPEW experimented with their own press. EF
agreed to oversee the project. Bessie Parkes
purchased a press and type, and hired a printer to...
Occupation
Mary Bosanquet Fletcher
From the age of seventeen Mary Bosanquet had admired the women whom the primitive church made deaconesses because of their ministering work among the poor, and she resolved to model herself on their practical ministry...
