Bessie Rayner Parkes

16 June 1829 - 23 March 1925

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.

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Connections

Connections Sort ascending	Author name	Excerpt
Textual Production	Marie Belloc Lowndes	MBL 's four-volume autobiography closed with A Passing World, posthumously published. It does not mention the fact that its title re-uses that of one of her mother 's books and echoes that of one of her own. 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.
Textual Features	Marie Belloc Lowndes	She was asked by Reginald Smith , editor of the Cornhill, to contribute an account of her mother 's young days, but she did not feel I could assent to his wish. Lowndes, Marie Belloc. The Merry Wives of Westminster. Macmillan. 169
Textual Features	George Eliot	This story is equally remarkable for the portraits of Mr Tryan (the Evangelical clergyman who not only converts Janet to his beliefs but succeeds in sparking her will to regeneration) and of Janet herself, but...
Textual Features	Anna Brownell Jameson	ABJ 's views on women and work were taken up with enthusiasm by Bessie Rayner Parkes , Barbara Leigh Smith , and other Langham Place Group members who combined their efforts to found the English...
Textual Features	Janet Hamilton	The vigour and originality of her voice on women's issues requires greater recognition, ranging as it does from the satiric Crinoline, to Contrasted Scenes from Real Life which juxtaposes the earthly lot of Lady Emily Hay
Textual Features	Anna Brownell Jameson	ABJ lent her writings as well as her moral support to these young feminists, by permitting extracts from her work to appear in the Waverley Journal during the period when Bessie Rayner Parkes and others...
Reception	Matilda Hays	In a letter to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon in 1858, Bessie Rayner Parkes wrote that all goes on like clockwork at the office, under Max, who is the most methodical of workers, & brings all...
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...
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...
Publishing	Marie Belloc Lowndes	MBL made her views known to the public through the columns of the Times on a variety of political and literary issues: women's suffrage, food rationing during the first world war (on which she offered...
Publishing	Anna Mary Howitt	During her time in Munich and her briefer time in Oberammergau, AMH wrote articles which were published in the Ladies' Companion, the Athenæum, and Household Words. Her description of the Oberammergau passion...
politics	Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon	At the meeting the female members of the first Married Women's Property Committee confirmed the text of BLSB 's parliamentary petition and planned for a signature crusade and then for the presentation of the petition...
politics	Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon	Isa Craig , Emily Davies , Bessie Parkes , Jessie Boucherett , and Elizabeth Garrett were members of the committee. Later on Clementia Taylor joined it too. Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press. 154-5
politics	Jessie Boucherett	JB and Bessie Rayner Parkes delivered papers at the Congress of the Social Science Association at Bradford, addressing issues relating to women's employment. Stone, James S. Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women’s Rights. P. D. Meany. 47
politics	Anna Brownell Jameson	ABJ became a mentor to a group of young reformers and educational pioneers, including Adelaide Procter , Emily Faithfull , and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon . She sometimes provided meeting space for the group, both...

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Texts

Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Vignettes. Alexander Strahan, 1866.