Clara Balfour

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Standard Name: Balfour, Clara
Birth Name: Clara Lucas
Married Name: Clara Balfour
Indexed Name: Clara Lucas Balfour
Used Form: Mrs C. L. Balfour
Clara Balfour , like many Victorians, wrote prolifically on the subject of temperance, arguing its importance for a healthy society. Her other works often had theological or anti-socialist aims. Her works include moral and didactic pamphlets, short stories for both adults and children, novels, and contributions to periodicals including literary criticism. Her biographical works about women give her significance in the development of women's literary history. In writing and lecturing on the achievements of women, particularly writers, she stressed the importance of women's education. She produced more than sixty publications, many of which went through multiple editions.
Black and white portrait of Clara Balfour. She is wearing a dark dress with thin white collar. Her hair, smooth in front with a middle parting, is piled up under a lace cap and arranged in sausage ringlets around her face.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Birth Sarah Trimmer
Sarah Kirby (later ST ) was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, the elder of two children.
Clara Lucas Balfour gives the date as 17 January, which suggests that she translated an Old Style date into New Style.
Balfour, Clara. A Sketch of Mrs. Trimmer. W. and F. G. Cash, 1854.
Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Cynthia Asquith
Her husband took great interest in other women and was frequently unfaithful. Having married him somewhat reluctantly, she, too, conducted an emotional life elsewhere: Beauman writes that she became pregnant by the writer Wilfrid Blunt
Literary responses Mary Wollstonecraft
MW 's posthumous vilification was followed by a long period during which her name was considered barely fit to be mentioned. Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna borrowed her title The Wrongs of Woman in 1843; Maria Jane Jewsbury

Timeline

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Texts

Balfour, Clara. A Sketch of Mrs. Trimmer. W. and F. G. Cash, 1854.
Balfour, Clara. Happy Evenings; or, The Literary Institution at Home. Houlston and Stoneman, 1851.
Balfour, Clara. Moral Heroism; or, The Trials and Triumphs of the Great and Good. Houlston and Stoneman, 1846.
Balfour, Clara, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Morning Dew Drops; or, The Juvenile Abstainer. W. and F. G. Cash, 1853.
Balfour, Clara. Sketches of English Literature, from the Fourteenth to the Present Century. Longman, 1852.
Balfour, Clara. Sketches of English Literature, from the Fourteenth to the Present Century. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Balfour, Clara. The Burnish Family. Scottish Temperance League, 1857.
Balfour, Clara. “The Female Poets of England”. People’s Journal, Vol.
10
, 1850, pp. 265-6.
Balfour, Clara. The Victim; or, An Evening’s Amusement at the "Vulture Tavern". British Workman, 1860.
Balfour, Clara. Woman and the Temperance Reformation. Houlston and Stonemen, 1849.
Balfour, Clara. Women Worth Emulating. American Tract Society, 1877.
Balfour, Clara. Working Women of the Last Half Century: The Lesson of their Lives. W. and F. G. Cash, 1854.