Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Bessie Rayner Parkes
-
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.
Her friendship with Arthur Stanley
, Dean of Westminster Abbey, and his wife, Lady Augusta Stanley
, helped her through her mourning period; they encouraged her to try new interests and hopes.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Another dear...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Charles
Combe Edge soon became a noted centre of religous, philanthropic, and social activity.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan.
343
Marie Belloc Lowndes
, who stayed there for many weekends as a child with her mother, Bessie Rayner Belloc (formerly Parkes)
Material Conditions of Writing
Elizabeth Charles
EC
was a diligent researcher and a great reader of historical biography (though not of novels). While she was working on this book, Bessie Rayner Belloc (formerly Parkes)went to great trouble to obtain every...
Textual Production
Ann Bridge
Susan Lowndes (daughter of novelist Marie Belloc Lowndes
and so grand-daughter of suffragist Bessie Rayner Parkes
) was an old friend of AB
and was resident in Portugal with her Portuguese husband. The two of...
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
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
Textual Production
Jessie Boucherett
During the 1860s JB
wrote a number of articles for the English Woman's Journal, the publication begun by Bessie Rayner Parkes
and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
(and of whose successor journal she was later editor).
Lacey, Candida Ann, editor. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group. Routledge.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press.
97
Friends, Associates
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Of her diverse network of friends, BLSB
wrote to an aunt in 1857, I am one of the cracked people of the world, and I like to herd with the cracked such as A.M.H. [...
Occupation
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
At about this time she painted her finest water-colour, a large painting of the plain of Blidah in Algiers, showing honey-coloured sand, sparsely covered with grey olive trees, blue cacti, and alfa [sic]...
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...
Cultural formation
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
By December 1860 BLSB
was sufficiently interested in Roman Catholicism
(to which Bessie Rayner Parkes
later converted) to write about her interest to George Eliot
, who responded with sympathy but a clear statement of...
