Mona Caird

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Standard Name: Caird, Mona
Birth Name: Alice Mona Alison
Married Name: Alice Mona Caird
Pseudonym: G. Noel Hatton
Pseudonym: The Author of Whom Nature Leadeth
MC , until recently very little remembered, caused a sensation in 1888 with her articles calling for reform in marriage practices. She was already at that date a published novelist, and went on issuing novels until 1931, the year before her death, as well as essays, short stories, travel writing, and journalism. She was an important member of the group of New Woman writers of the 1890s, and campaigned in fiction and non-fiction for a group of related causes: improved status for women (in education, marriage, divorce, child-rearing, job opportunities, and voting rights), anti-vivisection, pacificism, and international co-operation. She was a writer of high intellectual ability, and her characteristic tone is trenchant, satirical, and often bleakly comic.

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Ménie Muriel Dowie
As a public literary figure MMD moved amongst the major writers of her day. At the Women Writers' Dinner of the New Vagabonds Club in June 1895, she spoke alongside Adeline Sergeant , Christabel Coleridge
Friends, Associates Rosamund Marriott Watson
She forged friendships with other women writers, including Mona Caird , E. Nesbit , Mathilde Blind , Amy Levy , and Alice Meynell . She was also a friend of William Sharp , Austin Dobson
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
In LondonKT met the politician William Gladstone (a supporter of Home Rule for Ireland) at a party given for Charles Parnell .
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder, 1913.
328-9
On another occasion, she attended a garden-party given by feminist novelist...
Friends, Associates F. Mabel Robinson
FMR shared to the full the social involvement of her family with entertaining leading figures in London cultural life: such men as John Singer Sargent , Robert Browning , William Morris , and Oscar Wilde
Friends, Associates Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Her travels enabled her to meet [w]omen from all over the world, fine women, thoughtful progressive women!
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. An Autobiography. Editor Lane, Ann J., University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
301
They included Jane Addams , Mona Caird , Marie Stritt (who translated Women and Economics into German),...
Friends, Associates Mathilde Blind
One of her travelling companions (and a close friend) was the New Woman novelist Mona Caird (famous for her declaration calling the institution of marriage a vexatious failure in the Westminster Review in 1888).
qtd. in
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
38
Intertextuality and Influence Henrietta Müller
The article begins with a favourable reference to G. Noel Hatton 's Whom Nature Leadeth, which Müller finds to illustrate with precision the inequitable nature of marriage in its present state. Although the husband...
Intertextuality and Influence Jane Hume Clapperton
JHC 's work influenced both the women's movement and advocates for social change generally. It became, according to Mohan Rao , the principal text of eugenics in the nineteenth century.
Rao, Mohan. From Population Control to Reproductive Health: Malthusian Arithmetic. Sage Publications, 2004.
93
In his article Socialism...
Intertextuality and Influence Flora Annie Steel
FAS brackets her extremely touching story between two overt comparisons of Indian with British culture, not to the latter's advantage. No matter how barbarous the marriage customs of India, FAS writes that Uma confronts...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Grand
Margaret Oliphant , reviewing the novel for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1889, described it as the expression of a great many thoughts of the moment, and of a desire which is stronger than it ever...
Leisure and Society Mathilde Blind
She and Mona Caird enjoyed going on long walks together in the countryside around Wendover near Oxford, of which Blind kept a record in her commonplace-book.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
30
Literary responses Emma Frances Brooke
Recently Carolyn Christensen Nelson has connected EFB 's optimistic view of marriage at the conclusion of this novel with Mona Caird 's Marriage (her well-known Westminster Review article of August 1888). Caird writes: men and...
Occupation Anna Livia
She also this year became the director of the Feminist Press in London, a position she held until 1989.
Anna Livia,. “Anna Livia Julian Brawn: Curriculum Vitae”. University of California, Berkeley: Department of French.
(Reprints from the Press during these years included Mona Caird 's The Daughters of Danaus.)
politics Annie S. Swan
A great event of the literary year at this time was the Women Writers' Dinner at the Trocadero restaurant, an idea first conceived by Honor Morten . ASS mentioned in her autobiographical account that the...
politics Charlotte Perkins Gilman
During the course of lecturing on women's issues CPG established warm relations with many of the leaders of the struggle for women's rights in Britain, notably Mona Caird .
Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Strategies: Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird. Manchester University Press, 2004.
162

Timeline

Late 1888: Harry Quilter published Is Marriage a Failure?,...

Building item

Late 1888

Harry Quilter published Is Marriage a Failure?, a collection of contributions to the debate aroused by Mona Caird 's critique of marriage.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
BLC
Hammerton, A. James. Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life. Routledge, 1992.
chronology

1890: Elizabeth A. Sharp, as Mrs William Sharp,...

Women writers item

1890

Elizabeth A. Sharp , as Mrs William Sharp, published the anthology Women Poets of the Victorian Era.
Sharp, Elizabeth A., editor. Women Poets of the Victorian Era. Walter Scott, 1889.
title page-xxx

June 1897: The first issue of The Adult, a periodical...

Building item

June 1897

The first issue of The Adult, a periodical from the Legitimation League , appeared: it campaigned for the rights of the illegitimate and for sex education.
McLaren, Angus. “Sex Radicalism in the Canadian Pacific Northwest 1890-1920”. American Sexual Politics: Sex, Gender and Race since the Civil War, edited by John C. Fout and Maura Shaw Tantillo, University of Chicago Press, 1993.
144
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.
180

31 May 1898: George Bedborough, secretary of the Legitimation...

Building item

31 May 1898

George Bedborough , secretary of the Legitimation League which sought to change the law to improve the position of illegitimate children, was arrested, largely in an attempt to damage the League through him.
Forward, Stephanie. “A Study in Yellow: Mona Caird’s ’The Yellow Drawing-Room’”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
7
, No. 2, 2000, pp. 295-07.
298

March 1911: The Idler monthly (launched as a sixpenny...

Writing climate item

March 1911

The Idler monthly (launched as a sixpenny magazine in 1892) ceased publication.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
316-17

Texts

Caird, Mona. A Romance of the Moors. J. W. Arrowsmith, 1891.
Caird, Mona. “Marriage”. Westminster Review, Vol.
130
, pp. 186-01.
Caird, Mona. One That Wins. T. Fisher Unwin, 1887, 2 vols.
Caird, Mona. The Daughters of Danaus. Bliss, Sands and Foster, 1894.
Caird, Mona. The Great Wave. Wishart, 1931.
Caird, Mona. The Morality of Marriage. George Redway, 1897.
Caird, Mona. The Morality of Marriage. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Caird, Mona. The Pathway of the Gods. Skeffington and Son, 1898.
Caird, Mona. The Stones of Sacrifice. Simpkin, Marshall, 1915.
Caird, Mona. The Wing of Azrael. Trübner, 1889, 3 vols.
Caird, Mona. Whom Nature Leadeth. Longmans, Green, 1883, 3 vols.