Bessie Rayner Parkes

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Standard Name: Parkes, Bessie Rayner
Birth Name: Elizabeth Rayner Parkes
Nickname: Bessie
Married Name: Elizabeth Rayner Belloc
Bessie Rayner Parkes (later Belloc) , a late nineteenth-century feminist, focused her writings especially on issues relating to women's work. During her life she published a collection of miscellaneous essays, a collection of vignettes, numerous articles in periodicals, a travel book, and political treatises. Though her feminist writings have been better recognized, her passion was poetry. She published a lengthy philosophical poem in addition to three volumes of poems, some of which were later compiled into a collection.
Sepia toned photograph of Bessie Rayner Parkes, seated on an upholstered chair, with an ornate table next to her. Her hands are clasped in her lap, she is wearing a dark dress with a voluminous skirt and long sleeves. She has dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Performance of text Harriet Beecher Stowe
Though HBS was internationally recognized for her written works she was not, unlike many other contemporary literary figures, a frequent lecturer. While Dickens , Samuel Clemens (who published as Mark Twain), Julia Ward Howe ...
Friends, Associates Edith J. Simcox
Elma Stuart , who had also been an intimate friend of George Eliot , became a close friend of EJS . In March 1881 they spent a week together at Malvern, where they exchanged...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Siddal
ES had met some female associates of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood : artists Anna Mary Howitt (daughter of Mary Howitt ) and Barbara Leigh Smith (later Bodichon), as well as Bessie Rayner Parkes .
Literary responses Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
In one of the many tributes published at the time of her death in 1934, friend and writer Marie Belloc Lowndes (daughter of feminist Bessie Rayner Parkes ) said that CADSwrote certain remarkable novels...
Friends, Associates Christina Rossetti
Around this time she became aware of her brother Dante Gabriel 's involvement with Elizabeth Siddal , although she and Siddal met only in 1854 and were never intimate friends. Close family friends of Christina...
Intertextuality and Influence Christina Rossetti
In From the Antique, a dramatic lyric composed on 28 June 1854,
Rossetti, Christina. The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti. Editor Crump, Rebecca W., Louisiana State University Press.
3: 449
CR 's speaker laments: It's a weary life, it is: she said:—
Doubly blank in a woman's lot:
I wish...
Publishing Christina Rossetti
After the appearance of Goblin Market, CR had less difficulty placing her verse in periodicals. The tide had already started to turn in the 1850s, when her work began to appear in journals including...
Friends, Associates Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR wrote to Charlotte Yonge a few years later, lamenting: oh! what a pity it is that we are all growing old who have had such happy happy times with one another.
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters. Editors Bloom, Abigail Burnham and John Maynard, Ohio State University Press.
242
She uttered...
death Adelaide Procter
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon wrote of her grief to Bessie Rayner Parkes : Adelaide's death is as a light gone from among us.
Hirsch, Pam. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon 1827-1891: Feminist, Artist and Rebel. Chatto and Windus.
210
AP was buried in the Catholic St Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green...
Literary responses Adelaide Procter
This poem was highly regarded by Bessie Rayner Parkes . Critic Gill Gregory reads it as a powerful critique of Keble 's authoritative voice and an unsettling of key Tractarian tenets, stemming from AP 's revisionary poetics.
Gregory, Gill. The Life and Work of Adelaide Proctor. Ashgate.
85
Textual Production Adelaide Procter
AP was involved with her reform-minded friends, including Bessie Rayner Parkes , Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon , and Matilda M. Hays , in helping to found the English Woman's Journal in 1858. She later contributed...
Textual Production Adelaide Procter
According to Bessie Rayner Parkes , Procter had to be urged to publish the collection. The first series, which was issued at a price of 5 shillings by Bell and Daldy , had another edition...
Literary responses Adelaide Procter
The Athenæum carried a brief review by H. F. Chorley congratulating the journal (and in effect himself) on having early recognised that AP belonged to the Golden Book of English poetesses.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1989 (1865): 799
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
A...
Reception Adelaide Procter
By 1877 AP was said to be second only to Tennyson in the sales of her work, and, as Bessie Rayner Belloc said, her poems must have penetrated into every reading household in Great Britain...
Cultural formation Adelaide Procter
AP may have converted to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism by this date; certainly she had by 1851.
Sources conflict on the date of AP 's conversion, most of them dating it in 1851. Bessie Rayner Parkes

Timeline

8 June 1847: A Factory Act, also known as The Ten Hours...

Building item

8 June 1847

A Factory Act, also known as The Ten Hours Act, restricted the length of British women's and teenagers' working day in textile factories to ten hours.

December 1855: Barbara Leigh Smith, later Bodichon, founded...

National or international item

December 1855

Barbara Leigh Smith , later Bodichon, founded the Married Women's Property Committee (sometimes called the Women's Committee) to draw up a petition for a married women's property bill.

February 1856: The Waverley Journal: For the Cultivation...

Writing climate item

February 1856

The Waverley Journal: For the Cultivation of the Honourable, the Progressive and the Beautiful, began fortnightly publication, advertising itself as Edited and published by Ladies.
Harrison, Royden et al. The Warwick Guide to British Labour Periodicals, 1790-1970: A Check List. Harvester Press.
589

February 1858: Bessie Rayner Parkes described to George...

Building item

February 1858

Bessie Rayner Parkes described to George Eliot , in a letter, the limited company established by the Langham Place group to support The English Woman's Journal.

February 1858: Bessie Rayner Parkes described to George...

Building item

February 1858

Bessie Rayner Parkes described to George Eliot , in a letter, the limited company established by the Langham Place group to support The English Woman's Journal.

March 1858: The English Woman's Journal, a monthly magazine...

Women writers item

March 1858

The English Woman's Journal, a monthly magazine on the theory and practice of organised feminism, began publication in London, with financial support from Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and others, under the editorship of...

7 July 1859: The first meeting of the Society for Promoting...

Building item

7 July 1859

The first meeting of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women was held in London; founding members included Anna Jameson , Emily Faithfull , Jessie Boucherett , Adelaide Procter , Bessie Rayner Parkes , Isa Craig , and Sarah Lewin .

October 1859: The Society for Promoting the Employment...

National or international item

October 1859

The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women officially joined with the Social Science Association .

Late 1859: The offices of The English Woman's Journal...

Women writers item

Late 1859

The offices of The English Woman's Journal moved from Cavendish Square to 19 Langham Place, where a ladies' club was also planned.

September 1860: Emily Faithfull and Bessie Rayner Parkes...

Writing climate item

September 1860

Emily Faithfull and Bessie Rayner Parkes spoke on the employment of women in printing trades at the fourth annual conference of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science held in Glasgow.

1861: Maria Rye established the Female Middle Class...

National or international item

1861

Maria Rye established the Female Middle Class Emigration Society in response to the scarcity of jobs in England for girls and women.

August 1864: The English Woman's Journal, a practical...

Building item

August 1864

The English Woman's Journal, a practical and theoretical source of organized feminism from London, merged into The Alexandra Magazine and English Woman's Journal.

18 August 1882: The Married Women's Property Act gave women...

National or international item

18 August 1882

The Married Women's Property Act gave women the right to all the property they earned or acquired before or during marriage.

Texts

Parkes, Bessie Rayner. A Passing World. Ward and Downey, 1897.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. “A Review of the Last Six Years”. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group, edited by Candida Ann Lacey, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986, pp. 215-22.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. “A Review of the Last Six Years”. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Group, edited by Candida Ann Lacey, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2001, pp. 215-22.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Ballads and Songs. Bell and Daldy, 1863.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner et al., editors. English Woman’s Journal. English Woman’s Journal Company.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Essays on Woman’s Work. Alexander Strahan, 1865.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Essays on Woman’s Work. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Gabriel. J. Chapman, 1856.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Historic Nuns. Duckworth, 1898.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. In a Walled Garden. Ward and Downey, 1895.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. In a Walled Garden. Ward and Downey, 1896.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. “In a Walled Garden, 1895”. Indiana University: Victorian Women Writers Project.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. In Fifty Years. Sands, 1904.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner, and Mary Merryweather. “Introduction”. Experience of Factory Life, 3rdrd ed, E. Faithfull, 1862.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. “Isa Craig and the Prize Poem on Burns”. English Woman’s Journal, Vol.
2
, No. 12, pp. 417-20.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. La belle France. Strahan, 1868.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Peoples of the World. Cassell, Petter and Galpin, 1870.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Poems. J. Chapman, 1852.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Remarks on the Education of Girls. J. Chapman, 1854.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Remarks on the Education of Girls. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Summer Sketches and Other Poems. J. Chapman, 1854.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. The Flowing Tide. Sands, 1900.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner, and Anne Leigh Smith. The History of Our Cat Aspasia. 1856.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. “The Poems of Adelaide Anne Procter”. The Month, Vol.
4
, pp. 79-88.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. The Problems of the Feminist Periodical: Letter to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon.