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.
Sepia toned photograph of Bessie Rayner Parkes, seated on an upholstered chair, with an ornate table next to her. Her hands are clasped in her lap, she is wearing a dark dress with a voluminous skirt and long sleeves. She has dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Violet Hunt
Sooner or Later received (perhaps excessively) high praise from a number of VH 's contemporaries. Marie Belloc Lowndes (daughter of Bessie Rayner Parkes ) wrote in The Merry Wives of Westminster, 1946, that it...
Literary responses Mary Catherine Hume
Bessie Rayner Parkes recommended this work to George Eliot . Eliot was not pleased with it and wrote, Heaven preserve me from reading Miss Hume's poems! . . . I was quite cowed by their...
Friends, Associates Anna Mary Howitt
Family biographer Carl Ray Woodring numbers AMH with a group of Pre-Raphaelite sisters, including Barbara Leigh Smith (later Bodichon) , Bessie Rayner Parkes , and Margaret Gillies , who associated themselves with innovation in...
Publishing Anna Mary Howitt
During her time in Munich and her briefer time in Oberammergau, AMH wrote articles which were published in the Ladies' Companion, the Athenæum, and Household Words. Her description of the Oberammergau passion...
Literary responses Anna Mary Howitt
Mary Howitt called the Boadicea picture very fine, truly sublime.
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press.
216
Ruskin had demanded in a letter: What do you know about Boadicea? Leave such subjects alone and paint me a pheasant's wing.
Lee, Amice. Laurels & Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt. Oxford University Press.
217
Bessie Rayner Parkes
Friends, Associates Mary Howitt
MH served on the reception committee for Harriet Beecher Stowe at the time of her visit to England in April 1853. She had by that time become friendly with titled people and with members of...
Occupation Matilda Hays
By 1861 MH was a partner in the Victoria Press . Her involvement, however, was short-lived, and she never invested any funds in the press.
Stone, James S. Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women’s Rights. P. D. Meany.
52, 238n10
By 1860 rumours were apparently circulating about her...
Family and Intimate relationships Matilda Hays
Marie Belloc Lowndes , daughter of Bessie Rayner Parkes , recalled MH as a tall, handsome woman with a strongly featured face, very clever, and with a great deal of charm, particularly for other women...
Reception Matilda Hays
In a letter to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon in 1858, Bessie Rayner Parkes wrote that all goes on like clockwork at the office, under Max, who is the most methodical of workers, & brings all...
Textual Production Matilda Hays
With Bessie Rayner Parkes , MH co-edited the English Woman's Journal, for which she also wrote on such subjects as Harriet Hosmer and Florence Nightingale .
Rendall, Jane. “’A Moral Engine’? Feminism, Liberalism and the <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>English Woman’s Journal</span&gt”;. Equal or Different: Women’s Politics 1800-1914, edited by Jane Rendall, Basil Blackwell, pp. 112-38.
116, 120
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.
Occupation Matilda Hays
As well as co-founding and co-editing the English Woman's Journal with Bessie Rayner Parkes (between 1857 and 1862),
Rendall, Jane. “’A Moral Engine’? Feminism, Liberalism and the <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>English Woman’s Journal</span&gt”;. Equal or Different: Women’s Politics 1800-1914, edited by Jane Rendall, Basil Blackwell, pp. 112-38.
116, 119-20
MH also worked devotedly for the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women .
Merrill, Lisa. When Romeo Was a Woman. University of Michigan Press.
185
Friends, Associates Matilda Hays
Working on the English Woman's Journal strengthened MH 's connection to members of the Langham Place Group . The tie that she formed with with Theodosia, Lady Monson , lasted into her obscure later years...
Textual Features Janet Hamilton
The vigour and originality of her voice on women's issues requires greater recognition, ranging as it does from the satiric Crinoline, to Contrasted Scenes from Real Life which juxtaposes the earthly lot of Lady Emily Hay
Intertextuality and Influence Dora Greenwell
Throughout the essay DG relates her arguments to those of John Stuart Mill , Anna Jameson , and Bessie Rayner Parkes , and though she agrees with them on certain points (mainly their call for...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Gaskell
By 1852, EG 's strong nucleus of important female friends included Barbara Leigh Smith , Bessie Parkes , Adelaide Procter , Octavia and Miranda Hill , and Harriet Martineau .
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber.
311

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.