Table of Contents

Introduction
Anna Jameson and the use of picturesque history
Hannah Lawrance and the claims of women's history
Margaret Oliphant and the lessons of eighteenth-century history
Anna Jameson, cultural authority and public moralism
Beautiful and useful arts in Hannah Lawrance's cultural criticism
Marian Evans's cultural criticism in the context of women's public moralism
Eliza Lynn Linton and feminism at the turn of the century
Beatrice Hastings, Rebecca West and women's rights at the turn of the century
Virginia Woolf's common reader and her social criticism
The contexts of conclusions
Bibliography

About the Author

Benjamin Dabby teaches history at Highgate School, London.

Reviews

This is a subtle and penetrating book that rests on deep erudition and careful thought..As a model for an intellectual history of women's thought it has many virtues.
*JOURNAL OF VICTORIAN CULTURE*

[A]n absorbing exposition of the contributions of women to extant and emerging print media and public discourse in Britain in the long nineteenth century.
*AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW*

A subtle and penetrating book that rests on deep erudition and careful thought.
*JOURNAL OF VICTORIAN CULTURE*

Useful reading, not only for those with a particular interest in the specific women he writes about, or public moralists more generally, but also for anyone researching the history of women's rights.
*BRITISH ASSOCIATION OF VICTORIAN STUDIES*

[A]n important, interesting, deeply intelligent contribution to the field.
*JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES*

Dabby's text firmly places women in the center of public debates about morality in Britain . . . [He] does an excellent job of creating the corpus of female moralists in Britain at the turn of the century.
*INSIGHTS: NOTES FROM THE COORDINATING COUNCIL OF WOMEN IN HISTORY*

An engaging and well-written book...Benjamin Dabby's scholarship both alters and enriches our understanding of the writers he examines.
*TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT*

An altogether splendid piece of work.
*VICTORIAN WEB*