An introduction to the field of women and gender in Victorian and Edwardian England. This set describes sources that offer a broad spectrum of opinions, debates, ideas and ideologies about "woman" as revealed in writings a bout sex roles, gender and womanhood; marriage, family and domestic life; health and medical treatment; law and amendments to legal definitions of women's place; religion; and education.

Points to the many ways in which the study of autobiography can contribute to the theory, practice, and politics of women’s studies as curriculum, and to feminist theory more generally.

Arnim, Bettina von ; Hugo, Adèle ; Wolf, Christa ; Mill, John Stuart ; Thackeray Ritchie, Anne ; Shortridge Foltz, Clara.

Across eight volumes, this two-part collection of selected texts focuses on autobiographies and biographies of courtesans, directories of whores, erotic poems dedicated to harlots, jocular descriptions of prostitutes and jest books on strumpets.

This reader contains a mixture of new narratives on suffrage, together with reinterpretations of some long-established "truths" about the campaign by British women for the vote. Some chapters shift the focus from "the great and the good" based in London, and explore the issues which motivated supporters in other parts of Britain. Other chapters illuminate the lengths some men were prepared to go to see women become voters - and the lengths others were prepared to go to stop them. A variety of topics is covered by the contributors, who include both established scholars and writers relatively new to the field. "A Suffrage Reader" provides an opportunity to push back the boundaries of suffrage history, enabling us to think again about the diverse and sometimes contraditory motives for, and outcomes of, involvement in the long campaign by women for the vote in Britain. The book also makes it possible to pause and reflect upon recent developments in writing on suffrage history, and the extent to which this has been bound up with developing attitudes towards politics in the latter decades of the 20th century.

A comprehensive and versatile source for researchers in a broad range of disciplines, Women in Context is a biographical, analytical, and critical bibliography of narrative autobiographies written by over eight hundred women born in the United Kingdom and British territories from the mid-eighteenth century to mid-twentieth centuries. Each entry provides publication and catalog information, a brief biographical sketch, an analysis of the topical content, and a critical comment on style, tone, and purpose of the autobiography.

This volume is the first to identify a significant body of life narratives by working-class women and to demonstrate their inherent literary significance. Placing each memoir within its generic, historical, and biographical context, this book traces the shifts in such writings over time, examines the circumstances which enabled working-class women authors to publish their life stories, and places these memoirs within a wider autobiographical tradition. Additionally, Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women enables readers to appreciate the clear-sightedness, directness, and poignancy of these works.