Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
When, late in life, she forbade the writing of an intimate biography but expressed her willingness that a sketch should be written, she thought such a sketch might advantageously cover both herself and Madame Bodichon...
In May 1869 George Eliot
recorded in her diary Bodichon's steady friendship at the time when G. H. Lewes
's son Thornie
was dying of tuberculosis of the spine. Bodichon visited twice a week and...
Friends, Associates
George Eliot
Bessie Rayner Parkes
(already a friend of Marian Evans—later GE
) introduced her to Barbara Leigh Smith
, who became her close confidant and supporter.
Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. W.W. Norton.
136
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
Mary Howitt
MH
served on the reception committee for Harriet Beecher Stowe
at the time of her visit to England in April 1853. She had by that time become friendly with titled people and with members of...
Friends, Associates
Jessie Boucherett
Partly through her membership of the Kensington Society
(a social and political discussion group of about fifty women inaugurated in 1865), JB
broadened her acquaintance with significant members of the feminist movement, including Frances Power Cobbe
Friends, Associates
George Eliot
Some of her closest friends were prominent feminists, and they were among those soonest willing to flout convention and visit her after her union to Lewes.
Despite the social and spiritual gulf between them, GE
Friends, Associates
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
During the 1860s she and her husband formed a friendship with Bessie Rayner Parkes
.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus.
Her English mother, who conducted her distinguished feminist writing career as Bessie Rayner Parkes
, had married at thirty-eight (after converting to Catholicism about three years earlier). She met her husband while renting a chalet...
Family and Intimate relationships
Matilda Hays
Marie Belloc Lowndes
, daughter of Bessie Rayner Parkes
, recalled MH
as a tall, handsome woman with a strongly featured face, very clever, and with a great deal of charm, particularly for other women...
Family and Intimate relationships
George Eliot
Lewes was married. He and his wife had agreed as rational free-thinkers that monogamy was unnatural. He had thus tolerated her relationship with his friend Thornton Hunt
, and supported her children by Hunt, who...
Family and Intimate relationships
Georgiana Fullerton
Alexander Fullerton was heir to estates in Gloucestershire and Northern Ireland, including Ballintoy Castle in County Antrim. He was an officer with the Royal Horse Guards
(the Blues) before his marriage. There was some...