Before Victoria : extraordinary women of the British Romantic era / by Elizabeth Campbell Denlinger ; foreword by Lyndall Gordon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Denlinger, Elizabeth Campbell.

Contributor:

Gordon, Lyndall.

New York Public Library.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Great Britain--Biography.

Women.

Great Britain--History--1789-1820--Biography.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--History--1800-1837--Biography.

Great Britain--Social conditions--18th century.

Great Britain--Social conditions--19th century.

Great Britain--Biography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (208 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : New York Public Library : Columbia University Press, 2005.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

It might not have the been the revolution that Mary Wollstonecraft called for in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but the Romantic era did witness a dramatic change in women's lives. Combining literary and cultural history, this richly illustrated volume brings back to life a remarkable, though frequently overlooked, group of women who transformed British culture and inspired new ways of understanding feminine roles and female sexuality. What was this revolution like? Women were expected to be more moral, more constrained, and more private than in the eighteenth century, when women such as Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire crafted bold public personas. Genteel women no longer laughed aloud at bawdy jokes and noblewomen ran charity bazaars instead of private casinos. By 1800, motherhood had become a sacred calling and women who could afford to do so devoted themselves to the home. While this idealization of domesticity kept some women off the streets, it afforded others new opportunities. Often working from home, women wrote novels and poetry, sculpted busts, painted portraits, and conducted scientific research. They also seized the chance to do good, and crafted new public roles for themselves as philanthropists and reformers. Now-obscure female astronomers, photographers, sculptors, and mathematicians share these pages with celebrated writers such as Mary Shelley, her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Robinson, who in addition to being a novelist and actress was also the mistress of the Prince of Wales. This book also makes full use of The New York Public Library's extensive collections, including graphic works and caricatures from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, manuscripts, hand-colored illustrations, broadsides, drawings, oil paintings, notebooks, albums and early photographs. These vivid, beautiful, and often humorous images depict these women, their works, and their social and domestic worlds.

Contents:

Mary Robinson, eighteenth-century romantic

Exemplary women : Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, and their worlds

Not quite good enough : three imperfect lives

The modern Venus, or improper ladies, and others

Strong passions of the mind : women in literature and the visual arts

Rational dames and ladies on horseback : scientists and travelers

The youngest romantics

The Pforzheimer Collection and its female inhabitants : an afterword.

Notes:

"Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Before Victoria: extraordinary women of the British Romantic era, presented at the New York Public Library, Humanities and Social Sciences Library, D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall, April 8-July 30, 2005"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-180) and index.

ISBN:

9780231509930

0231509936

OCLC:

827480887