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.
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
Friends, Associates
George Eliot
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
Friends, Associates
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
During the 1860s she and her husband formed a friendship with Bessie Rayner Parkes
.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus.
Westwater, Martha. The Wilson Sisters. Ohio University Press.
115
friends until they fell out just before Emilie was married. Westwater suggests that they may have been introduced by Bessie Parkes
, whose father,...
Friends, Associates
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Bessie Rayner Parkes
' family took a sea-side house at Hastings next to Barbara Leigh Smith
's family.
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Charles
Her friendship with Arthur Stanley
, Dean of Westminster Abbey, and his wife, Lady Augusta Stanley
, helped her through her mourning period; they encouraged her to try new interests and hopes.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber.
311
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Charles
Combe Edge soon became a noted centre of religous, philanthropic, and social activity.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan.
343
Marie Belloc Lowndes
, who stayed there for many weekends as a child with her mother, Bessie Rayner Belloc (formerly Parkes)
Friends, Associates
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Barbara Leigh Smith (later BLSB
) and Bessie Rayner Parkes
met Dr Elizabeth Blackwell
, then the western world's only qualified female physician.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press.
58-9
Family and Intimate relationships
Marie Belloc Lowndes
Her English mother, who conducted her distinguished feminist writing career as Bessie Rayner Parkes
, had married at thirty-eight (after converting to Catholicism about three years earlier). She met her husband while renting a chalet...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
George Eliot
Lewes was married. He and his wife had agreed as rational free-thinkers that monogamy was unnatural. He had thus tolerated her relationship with his friend Thornton Hunt
, and supported her children by Hunt, who...
Family and Intimate relationships
Georgiana Fullerton
Alexander Fullerton was heir to estates in Gloucestershire and Northern Ireland, including Ballintoy Castle in County Antrim. He was an officer with the Royal Horse Guards
(the Blues) before his marriage. There was some...
