Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women Writers: A Hall of Mirrors and the Long Nineteenth Century

Description

This book is an investigation of the biases, contradictions, errors, ambiguities, gaps, and historical contexts in biographies of controversial British women who published during the long nineteenth century, many of them left unchecked and perpetuated from publication to publication. Fourteen scholars analyze the agenda, problems, and strengths of biographical material, highlighting the flaws, deficiencies, and influences that have distorted the portraits of women such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Sydney Owenson, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Felicia Hemans, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Caroline Norton, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Lady Florence Dixie, George Eliot, and Edith Simcox. Through exposing distortions, this fascinating study demonstrates that biographies are often more about the biographer than they are about the biographee and that they are products of the time in which they are written. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv Introduction; or‚ What You Will (Brenda Ayres)....Pages 1-16 Genteel Appropriations of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762): Lady Louisa Stuart, William Moy Thomas, and the Rigors of Victorian Memoir (Magdalena Nerio)....Pages 17-36 A Vindication of the Woman Known as Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) (Brenda Ayres)....Pages 37-55 Artifact or Artifice? The Epistolary Image of Mary Hays (1759–1843) (Sarah Faulkner)....Pages 57-73 “So Irish; So Modish, So Mixtish, So Wild” Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan; 1783–1859) & The Makings of a Life (Julie Donovan)....Pages 75-91 Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838): Whose Poetess? (Katherine Montwieler)....Pages 93-109 The After-lives of Felicia Hemans (1793–1835): Biographical Misconstructions (Helen Luu)....Pages 111-128 Harriet Martineau (1802–1876): Autobiography, Biography, and Literary Legacies (Deborah A. Logan)....Pages 129-148 “Stuck Through with a Pin, and Beautifully Preserved”: Curating the Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) (Elizabeth Way)....Pages 149-167 Caroline Norton (1808–1877): The Injured Wife, Scandal, and the Politics of Feminist Memory (Gail Savage)....Pages 169-187 The Biographer as Biographee: Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) (Anna Koustinoudi)....Pages 189-209 Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855): (Un)Masked Author to Mythic Woman (Sarah E. Maier)....Pages 211-229 An Unconventional and Contradictory Life: Lady Florence Dixie (1855–1905) (Taryne Jade Taylor)....Pages 231-248 “A Woman Whom Men Could More Than Love”: Transfiguring the Unlovely in George Eliot (1819–1880) (Nancy Marck Cantwell)....Pages 249-264 Irony upon Irony: The Persistence of Gordon Haight’s Perceptions of Edith Simcox (1844–1901) (Constance M. Fulmer)....Pages 265-282 Back Matter ....Pages 283-291