Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
George Eliot
-
Standard Name: Eliot, George
Birth Name: Mary Anne Evans
Nickname: Polly
Nickname: Pollian
Self-constructed Name: Mary Ann Evans
Self-constructed Name: Marian Evans
Self-constructed Name: Marian Evans Lewes
Pseudonym: George Eliot
Pseudonym: Felix Holt
Married Name: Mary Anne Cross
GE
, one of the major novelists of the nineteenth century and a leading practitioner of fictional realism, was a professional woman of letters who also worked as an editor and journalist, and left a substantial body of essays, reviews, translations on controversial topics, and poetry.
The novel brings together the fashionable upper-class society which EF
had experienced in her youth, with the question of women's employment which was the burning issue of her working life. She acknowledges the work of...
Intertextuality and Influence
U. A. Fanthorpe
With this volume, says UAF
, I entered the different world of S. Martin's, Lancaster, and of France; and I was just beginning to have things to say about the condition of women...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Eva Figes
She considers the drama of ancient Greece and of the Renaissance, setting each in its historical context. After dealing with issues of religious belief, kingship, and the dead, she comes to that of women and...
In her introductions to Edgeworth, EF
notes Edgeworth's high opinion of Austen and Inchbald as novelists,
Figes, Eva, and Maria Edgeworth. “Introduction”. Belinda, Pandora, p. vii - xi.
viii
, argues that unlike Austen
's her young men need to grow up as much as her...
Friends, Associates
Edward FitzGerald
Despite a somewhat reclusive life both before and after his separation from his wife within a year of their marriage, he was well connected with the Victorian literary scene, and expressed strong opinions on women...
In this pamphlet, which she directed towards the middle and upper classes, IOF
declares herself interested in both the moral condition and the economic position of industrial women.
Ford, Isabella Ormston. Industrial Women and How to Help Them. Humanitarian League.
1
She argues that prostitution has economic...
Author summary
Jessie Fothergill
During her relatively short career in the later nineteenth century, Jessie Fothergill
produced fourteen novels, many of which ran to several editions and appeared in Indian and Australian journals,
She acquired much knowledge through her voracious consumption of books: I loved books, and read all that I could get hold of, and have had many a rebuke for poring over those books instead of...
Textual Features
Jessie Fothergill
Of particular interest is JF
's handling of the benefits of cross-class mutual aid and moral principle
Debenham, Helen. “’Almost always two sides to a question’: the novels of Jessie Fothergill”. Popular Victorian Women Writers, edited by Kay Boardman and Shirley Jones, Manchester University Press, pp. 66-89.
76
as rich and poor, male and female, employer and workers, civil authorities and landowners join forces against...
Literary responses
Jessie Fothergill
The subject-matter led one reviewer to comment that JFdoes not deal with the most agreeable of subjects.
Helen Debenham
observes that while JF
never abandons her social concerns, the emphasis shifts as she...
Family and Intimate relationships
Julia Frankau
Her daughter Joan (by marriage Joan Bennett
) became a university teacher and published books in the 1940s on George Eliot
and Virginia Woolf
.
Frankau, Reuben. Emails to Orlando about Julia Frankau, with attached bibliography.
Intertextuality and Influence
Julia Frankau
Dr Benjamin Phillips is mercenary: he is also a misogynist who looks on women as subordinate beings created for his pleasure, a sensualist who recognises that sex gives a woman power over him even while...
Intertextuality and Influence
Julia Frankau
This tie broadens the social scope of the novel. Karl is Jewish but not an observant Jew. He wishes he could believe in Christianity for its redeeming message and wants to extend that choice to...
