Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mona Caird
-
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.
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.
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),...
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...
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...
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.
