Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
George Egerton
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Standard Name: Egerton, George
Birth Name: Mary Chavelita Dunne
Nickname: Chav
Nickname: Chavvy
Married Name: Mary Chavelita Clairmonte
Married Name: Mary Chavelita Golding Bright
Pseudonym: Ardrath
Self-constructed Name: George Egerton
GE
(born Mary Chavelita Dunne), writer of New Womanshort stories, has been called the first English writer to present female sexual drives explicitly as existing independently of and differently from male sexuality.
Bjørhovde, Gerd. Rebellious Structures. Norwegian University Press, 1987.
129-30
Her stories (five volumes) challenged convention not only in their frank treatment of female sexuality, but also in breaking with the conventions of Victorian realism. Often elliptical and impressionistic, they anticipate twentieth-century modernism in their focus on their characters' inner lives. GE
tried her hand at drama, but none of her three plays succeeded and only one made it to print. She also published a novel, a volume of love letters, and two translations. She left unpublished an incomplete autobiography, a journal, and another work. A selection of her letters appeared in 1958. Her heroines struggle to balance the desire for personal and professional freedom with the instinctual longing for love, both romantic and maternal.
Vicinus, Martha. “Rediscovering the ’New Woman’ of the 1890s: The Stories of ’George Egerton’”. Feminist Re-Visions: What Has Been and What Might Be, edited by Vivian Patraka and Louise Tilly, University of Michigan Press, 1983, pp. 12-25.
Barine lived as a New Woman in her independence and her intellectual productivity, but her style was self-consciously feminine, and she deplored the left-wing feminism of writers like Olive Schreiner
and George Egerton
, whom...
Author summary
Henrik Ibsen
The plays of Henrik Ibsen
, nineteenth-century Norwegian poet and dramatist, were both controversial and enormously influential in Britain; their use of realist techniques to address contemporary social problems helped to bring about a revolution...
Publishing
Evelyn Sharp
Lane accepted the novel in November 1894 for his series called after George Egerton
's Keynotes.
John, Angela V. Evelyn Sharp: Rebel Woman, 18691955. Manchester University Press, 2009.
The collection included essays on The New Woman and Female Suffrage, the first of which provides an oft-quoted passage: there are conspicuous at the present two words which designate unmitigated bores: The Workingman and...
Textual Production
Sarah Grand
An entire literary-social movement evolved alongside SG
's writings about the New Woman. New Woman fiction, amounting to a new genre, had already been produced by George Egerton
in 1893, and was produced by Iota (Kathleen Caffyn)
Textual Production
Victoria Cross
VC
was also interested in dramatising her novels. She wrote a play from The Greater Law, which, to her surprise, was rejected by the dramatic agent Reginald Golding Bright
, husband of the author...
Textual Production
Ella D'Arcy
Monochromes appeared in Lane's series Keynotes, echoing the similar titles of George Egerton
, whose own first collection of stories opened the series and supplied its name.
This memoir presents extended word-pictures of Henry Harland
and Frederick Rolfe
(who satirised her in his Nicholas Crabbe, which was as yet unpublished during her career, but circulating in manuscript). She writes touchingly about...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Egerton, George. A Leaf from the Yellow Book. Editor White, Terence de Vere, Richards Press, 1958.
Egerton, George. Camilla States Her Case; A Play. 1925.
Egerton, George. Discords. J. Lane; Roberts Brothers, 1894.
Egerton, George. Fantasias. The Bodley Head, 1898.
Egerton, George. Flies in Amber. Hutchinson, 1905.
Hamsun, Knut. Hunger. Translator Egerton, George, L. Smithers, 1899.
Egerton, George. Keynotes. J. Lane; Roberts Brothers, 1893.
Egerton, George. Keynotes. E. Mathews and J. Lane, 1894.
Egerton, George. Rosa Amorosa. G. Richards, 1901.
Egerton, George. Symphonies. J. Lane, 1897.
Egerton, George. The Wheel of God. G. Richards, 1898.
Hansson, Ola. Young Ofeg’s Ditties. Translator Egerton, George, J. Lane; Roberts Brothers, 1895.