Eliza Lynn Linton

-
ELL was a Victorian novelist and memoirist whose historical importance rests largely on her pioneering role as a professional journalist who blazed a trail for her sex. She both held and promoted radical views early in life. Nevertheless, as is well known, many of her 200 periodical contributions are antifeminist essays which celebrate traditional women in traditional roles, and ridicule attempts at new departures for women as either a fad or a sham.
Photo of a carbon print of Eliza Lynn Linton by W. and D. Downey, published by Cassell, 1890. She sits at a small chinoiserie table with lattice-style legs, as if paused in the act of writing on a sheaf of papers. Her right hand holds a pen; her chin rests on her left. She has a broad face with wire spectacles perched on her nose, and wears a white cap and a dark (black?) dress in several layers, with lace at the wrists and a good deal of dark decoration including jet beads sewn on. She has a metal cuff bra

Milestones

10 February 1822

Eliza Lynn , later Linton, was born at Crosthwaite Vicarage near Keswick in Cumberland, the youngest of twelve children.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
18
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
Layard, George Somes. Mrs. Lynn Linton: Her Life, Letters, and Opinions. Methuen.
1, 2-3

1845

Eliza Lynn , later Linton, first reached print with a poem entitled The National Convention of the Gods, for which she received two guineas in payment from Ainsworth's Magazine.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
18

14 March 1868

ELL published the most famous of her series of anonymous middle essays for the Saturday Review on topics involving women (education, marriage, employment): The Girl of the Period.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Anderson, Nancy F. Woman against Women in Victorian England. Indiana University Press.
119

12 May 1870

ELL published another in her controversial Saturday Review essays, attacking radical or progressive women, the shrieking sisterhood, or those who sought the vote.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

January-December 1880

ELL 's first New Woman novel (a phrase which was not to become current for several more years), The Rebel of the Family was serialized in Temple Bar. It appeared in volume form the same year.
Scholar Andrea Broomfield argues that the phrase New Woman dates from an article in the Woman's Herald of 17 August 1893.
Broomfield, Andrea. “Much More Than an Antifeminist: Eliza Lynn Linton’s Contribution to the Rise of Victorian Popular Journalism”. Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol.
29
, No. 2, pp. 267-83.
280
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press.

19 November 1883

ELL published at London and New York, with her name, The Girl of the Period, and Other Social Essays, fifteen years after their periodical printing and years after two of the essays appeared at New York as a pamphlet.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press.

14 July 1898

ELL died of pneumonia at Queen Anne's Mansions in London, where she was on a visit from Malvern.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
18
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

By late 1899

ELL 's My Literary Life appeared posthumously, edited by Beatrice Harraden : titled thus on the title-page and spine, it is in the half-title and elsewhere called Reminiscences of Dickens , Thackeray , George Eliot , etc.
The front outside cover and the half-title give the alternative title. The date comes from the stamp in the Bodleian Library 's copy.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton.
cover and title-page

Biography

Birth and Background

10 February 1822

Eliza Lynn , later Linton, was born at Crosthwaite Vicarage near Keswick in Cumberland, the youngest of twelve children.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
18
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
Layard, George Somes. Mrs. Lynn Linton: Her Life, Letters, and Opinions. Methuen.
1, 2-3

Please click on login button to check your access and/or enter your credentials. Alternatively if you don’t have access, please click on “Subscribe”.

Log inSubscribe