Her writing evinces a strong belief in progress, which for her meant the gradual improvement of the world through difficult, often imperceptible human effort, sometimes characterised as meliorism. Her biographer Kathryn Hughes
calls her the...
Health
Isabella Beeton
Biographer Kathryn Hughes
, however, brings a serious charge against Sam Beeton: that before his marriage, during his rackety bachelor days,
Hughes, Kathryn. The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton. Knopf, 2005.
173
he had contracted syphilis. Hughes argues from a number of indications: the symptoms...
Literary responses
George Eliot
The critical tide did not turn (despite some acute criticism from Virginia Woolf
, who called Middlemarchthe magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up...
Literary responses
Sarah Lewis
Kathryn Hughes
notes that SL
's support of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution
(founded in 1843), and their efforts (via Queen's College
, founded on 1 May 1848) to establish a system of qualification for governesses...
Literary responses
Deborah Moggach
In her review Kathryn Hughes
wrote: The great joy of this tender little novel is Deborah Moggach's sensory imagination, the way that her carefully-researched historical facts are subordinated to the effect they would have had...
Literary responses
Iris Murdoch
A. N. Wilson
, reviewing the novel in The Spectator, found it warm, humorous, and difficult to put down. A New York Times Book Review critic felt the author made the design more complicated...
Reception
Isabella Beeton
The question of how to understand IB
and her somewhat tenuous relationship to her famous book remains. Lytton Strachey
hoped to write a biography of her in 1908, but found the materials wanting. By 1922...
Textual Features
Sylvia Beach
Reviewing the collection, Kathryn Hughes
found SB
's usual style characterised by a kind of polite chirpiness, with even faintly slangy expressions—jazzed up, my stars, corking—marked by scare quotes, and Beach's...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Hughes, Kathryn. “A good roll in the muck”. theguardian.com.
Hughes, Kathryn. “Artistic Instinct”. The Guardian, p. Review 7.
Hughes, Kathryn. “George Eliot: is this a new portrait of the author as a young woman?”. theguardian.com.
Hughes, Kathryn. George Eliot: The Last Victorian. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
Hughes, Kathryn. “Peddling obscenity with much stress”. Guardian Weekly, p. 39.
Hughes, Kathryn. “Prime cuts and passion”. The Guardian, p. Review 17.
Hughes, Kathryn. The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton. Knopf, 2005.
Hughes, Kathryn. The Victorian Governess. Hambledon Press, 1993.