Records of Girlhood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century WomenÆs Childhoods

by Sanders,Valerie

• ISBN13: 9780754601487
• ISBN10: 075460148X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-07-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This anthology brings together for the first time a collection of autobiographical accounts of their childhood by a range of prominent nineteenth-century literary women. These are strongly individualised descriptions by women who breached the cultural prohibitions against self writing, especially in the attention given to psychologically formative incidents and memories. Several offer detailed accounts of their inadequate schooling and their keen hunger for knowledge: others give new insights into the dynamics of Victorian family life, especially relationships with parents and siblings, the games they invented, and their sense of being misunderstood. Most contributors vividly describe their fears and fantasies, together with obsessive religious practices, and the development of an inner life as a survival strategy.This collection makes vital out-of-print material available to scholars working in the field of women's autobiography, the history of childhood, and Victorian literature. The volume will also appeal to general readers interested in biography, autobiography, the history of family life, education, and women's writing: read alongside Victorian women's novels it offers an intriguing commentary on some of their key themes.

Table of Contents

General Editors' Preface	vi
Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction	1	(21)
Amelia Opie	22	(10)
Dorothea Herbert	32	(3)
Mary Martha Sherwood	35	(11)
Mary Somerville	46	(12)
Lady Caroline Lamb	58	(3)
`Charlotte Elizabeth'	61	(15)
Anna Jameson	76	(13)
Mary Howitt	89	(14)
Sara Coleridge	103	(11)
Harriet Martineau	114	(46)
Fanny Kemble	160	(12)
Elizabeth Sewell	172	(10)
Frances Power Cobbe	182	(17)
Charlotte M. Yonge	199	(21)
Annie Besant	220	(15)
Index	235