Eliza Lynn Linton

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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.
Photo of a carbon print of Eliza Lynn Linton by W. and D. Downey, published by Cassell, 1890. She sits at a small chinoiserie table with lattice-style legs, as if paused in the act of writing on a sheaf of papers. Her right hand holds a pen; her chin rests on her left. She has a broad face with wire spectacles perched on her nose, and wears a white cap and a dark (black?) dress in several layers, with lace at the wrists and a good deal of dark decoration including jet beads sewn on. She has a metal cuff bra

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence John Strange Winter
In her study of Golden Gates, critic Molly Youngkin notes that from 1892 it became increasingly concerned with gender and social issues. In a memorable response to Eliza Lynn Linton 's piece The Wild...
Textual Features Sophie Veitch
The interdependence of her passionate feelings, athleticism, and goodness is made evident in her foil, Edith Cranley (later Edith Mason). Edith is a perfect little lady,
Veitch, Sophie. The Dean’s Daughter. National Publishing Company.
8
but she is also weak and selfish, while...
Literary responses Frances Trollope
Mary Russell Mitford spoke for the more conventional side of early nineteenth-century opinion when she wrote that in spite of her terrible coarseness, [she] has certainly done two or three marvelously clever things.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 316
Literary responses Agnes Strickland
Lives of the Queens of England was frequently reprinted with additions and revisions; the 1852 edition, regarded as definitive, was reprinted in 1972 with an introduction by the Stricklands' fellow-biographer Antonia Fraser . Fraser 's...
Family and Intimate relationships Agnes Strickland
The relationship between Agnes and Elizabeth, the writing partners, was extremely close. Eliza Lynn Linton writes of the devoted love and subservience of Elizabeth, the working bee, to Agnes, the caressed and fêted butterfly.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton.
90
Friends, Associates Herbert Spencer
His broad social circle included several other women writers. Frances Power Cobbe , Eliza Lynn Linton , Matilda Betham-Edwards , and sisters Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff , were all his acquaintances. Later in life...
Textual Production Constance Smedley
An appendix, Women and the State by Ethel Snowden , was reprinted from the January number of The World's Work, giving a brief history of women in local government and public positions.
Smedley, Constance, and Mrs Philip Snowden. Woman: A Few Shrieks!. Garden City Press.
121ff
The...
Reception George Sand
Many other British writers were strongly influenced by GS : Geraldine Jewsbury , Matilda Hays , Anne Ogle , Eliza Lynn Linton , Mathilde Blind , and, most notably, Emily and Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot
Literary responses Regina Maria Roche
The British Critic (in the only review received by The Children of the Abbey)
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
judged it to be entertaining and well-written. It felt the well-drawn character of Adela to be somewhat too romantic, but...
Literary responses Ann Radcliffe
Anna Seward , in letters which were to be published in AR 's lifetime, mixed her praise of her gothic oeuvre with some trenchant criticism.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press.
221-2
Nathan Drake called Radcliffe the Shakespeare of Romance Writers...
Wealth and Poverty Jane Porter
Not long before death she was, according to Eliza Lynn Linton , in meagre and shabby circumstances.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton.
88
Literary responses Jane Porter
JP was, with her sister , one of those praised by John O'Keeffe in his poem Female Authors, Being an Answer to a Lady, who asserted, that by transmigration the soul of Shakespeare lived in...
Education C. E. Plumptre
Though nothing is know of CEP 's early education, in later life she kept an extensive library. On visiting her, Frederick James Gould noted that it was selected and arranged in an impressive order which...
death Julia Pardoe
In her last days she suffered badly from insomnia. According to Eliza Lynn Linton she died in bitter poverty, in a top room somewhere in or about Baker Street, deserted by the gay world...
Literary responses Julia Pardoe
Most reviewers of JP 's oeuvre felt it necessary to stress her minor status. At the end of the century Eliza Lynn Linton , looking back, thought JP had been a leading light in that...

Timeline

6 July 1839: In A Diary in America, Frederick Marryat...

Writing climate item

6 July 1839

In A Diary in America, Frederick Marryat promoted the stereotype that middle-class Americans adhered to a more strict paradigm of prudishness than their British counterparts, and apparently gave rise to the myth that Victorians...

1842: A bill to legalize marriage between a man...

Building item

1842

A bill to legalize marriage between a man and his deceased wife's sister was introduced in the House of Commons . It did not pass.

2 May 1857: A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened...

Building item

2 May 1857

A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum .

1876: John Maxwell sold Belgravia to Chatto and...

Writing climate item

1876

John Maxwell sold Belgravia to Chatto and Windus , ending Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's association with the monthly.

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.

19 March 1891: The ruling in R. v Jackson established that...

Building item

19 March 1891

The ruling in R. v Jackson established that it was illegal in Britain for a husband to beat or imprison his wife.

Texts

Linton, Eliza Lynn. Amymone. Richard Bentley, 1848.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. An Octave of Friends. Ward and Downey, 1891.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “Appendix B: Essays by Eliza Lynn Linton”. The Rebel of the Family, edited by Deborah T. Meem, Broadview, 2002, pp. 403-27.
Anderson, Nancy F., and Eliza Lynn Linton. “Appendix C: The Rebel of the Family: The Life of Eliza Lynn Linton”. The Rebel of the Family, edited by Deborah T. Meem and Deborah T. Meem, Broadview, 2002, pp. 428-40.
Broomfield, Andrea, and Eliza Lynn Linton. “Appendix D: Blending Journalism with Fiction: Eliza Lynn Linton and Her Rise to Fame as a Popular Novelist”. The Rebel of the Family, edited by Deborah T. Meem and Deborah T. Meem, Broadview, 2002, pp. 441-55.
Harsh, Constance, and Eliza Lynn Linton. “Appendix E: Eliza Lynn Linton as a New Woman Novelist”. The Rebel of the Family, edited by Deborah T. Meem and Deborah T. Meem, Broadview, 2002, pp. 456-74.
Sanders, Valerie, and Eliza Lynn Linton. “Appendix F: Eliza Lynn Linton and the Canon”. The Rebel of the Family, edited by Deborah T. Meem and Deborah T. Meem, Broadview, 2002, pp. 475-87.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. Azeth, the Egyptian. T. C. Newby, 1847.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. Dulcie Everton. Chatto and Windus, 1896.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. Grasp Your Nettle. Smith and Elder, 1865.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. In Haste and at Leisure. W. Heinemann, 1895.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “Introduction”. The Rebel of the Family, edited by Deborah T. Meem, Broadview, 2002, pp. 9-18.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. Ione. Chatto and Windus, 1883.
Mathers, Helen et al. “Is Society a Pleasure or a Bore?”. The Idlers’ Club, Vol.
9
, No. 6, pp. 907-14.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg. Tinsley Brothers, 1866.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “Miss Broughton’s Novels”. Temple Bar, Vol.
80
, pp. 196-09.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton, 1899.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. Ourselves. G. Routledge and Sons, 1869.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. Patricia Kemball. Chatto and Windus, 1875.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. Realities. Saunders and Otley, 1851.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. Sowing the Wind. Tinsley Brothers, 1867.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. The Atonement of Leam Dundas. Chatto and Windus, 1876.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland. Bentley and Son, 1885.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “The Girl of the Period; The Modern Revolt; The Wild Women: as Politicians; The Wild Women: as Social Insurgents”. Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors: Victorian Writing by Women on Women, edited by Susan Hamilton, Broadview, 1995, pp. 172-07.
Linton, Eliza Lynn. The Rebel of the Family. Chatto and Windus, 1880.