Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Eliza Lynn Linton
-
Standard Name: Linton, Eliza Lynn
Birth Name: Elizabeth Lynn
Married Name: Elizabeth Linton
Indexed Name: Mrs Lynn Linton
Indexed Name: E. 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.
In addition to his intellectual heterodoxy, Charles Bray was a sexual nonconformist. He had several illegitimate children, of whom he and his wife adopted at least one. GE
may or may not have known about...
Author summary
Sarah Stickney Ellis
The prolific SSE
, author of thirty-four books, was the most popular writer of Victorian conduct literature. Her four advice books addressed women in the burgeoning middle class; she also wrote novels, poems, and didactic...
Publishing
Isabella Ormston Ford
On 23 April 1892 IOF
contributed an article entitled Women and the Labour Party to a special series for the Leeds Times on Social and Political Questions by Representative English Women. Other notable contributors...
Frye, Kate Parry. “Introduction”. Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary, edited by Elizabeth Crawford, Francis Boutle Publishers, pp. 9-34.
27
Her diary mentions meeting briefly many leaders in the suffrage campaign. Her fellow activists and sympathizers included: sisters Alexandra
and Gladys Wright
; Sanitary Inspector and fellow...
Literary responses
Sarah Grand
The Review of Reviews perhaps disingenuously took SG
's acknowledgement of faults in The Modern Girl to mean that she deplored the emergence of this type: Mrs. Lynn Linton
will chortle for joy when she...
Friends, Associates
Beatrice Harraden
BH
described herself as the literary god-daughter of Eliza Lynn Linton
. (Her literary godfather was William Blackwood
). Her first meeting with Linton (the turning-point of her life, she wrote)
Harraden, Beatrice. “Mrs. Lynn Linton”. The Bookman, Vol.
BH
had her first short story accepted for Belgravia (formerly edited by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
) after Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine had declined it.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
She went on to publish other contributions to Blackwood's; even by...
Textual Production
Beatrice Harraden
In 1899 BH
edited Eliza Lynn Linton
's posthumously published memoir, My Literary Life.
Publishing
Beatrice Harraden
The Bookman printed BH
's two-page valedictory reminiscence of Eliza Lynn Linton
, who had died two months before this.
Harraden, Beatrice. “Mrs. Lynn Linton”. The Bookman, Vol.
8
, pp. 16-17.
16
Textual Production
Beatrice Harraden
In her novel Youth Calling, BH
presented a friendship between a young woman writer and an older woman which is thought to be based on her early relationship with Eliza Lynn Linton
.
“Youth Calling”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1191, p. 733.
733
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production
Matilda Charlotte Houstoun
Within the span of nine years MCH
produced eleven more novels, a biographical memoir, a novella, and a work of social commentary (The Poor of the Period; or, Leaves from a Loiterer's Diary...
Reception
Henry James
The story proved both controversial and lucrative for him. Eliza Lynn Linton
, ever interested in the changing moral complexion of young girls, wrote privately to James asking him to account for the heroine's behaviour...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Linton, Eliza Lynn. The Rebel of the Family. Editor Meem, Deborah T., Broadview, 2002.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and George Somes Layard. The Second Youth of Theodora Desanges. Hutchinson, 1900.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “The Threatened Abdication of Man”. National Review, Vol.
77
, pp. 577-92.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. The True History of Joshua Davidson. Strahan, 1872.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Arthur Hopkins. Under Which Lord?. Chatto and Windus, 1879.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, editor. Witch Stories. Chapman and Hall, 1861.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett, 1897.