Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Encyclopedia
Elizabeth Robins Pennell (February 21, 1855 – February 7, 1936) was an American writer who, for most of her adult life, made her home in London. A recent researcher summed her up as "an adventurous, accomplished, self-assured, well-known columnist, biographer, cookbook collector, and art critic"; in addition, she wrote travelogues, mainly of European cycling voyages, and memoirs, centred around her London salon. Her biographies included the first in almost a century of the proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
, one of her uncle the folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland
, and one of her friend the painter Whistler. In recent years, her art criticism has come under scrutiny, and her food criticism has been reprinted.
, she took up writing as a career. She started with articles in periodicals such as Atlantic Monthly, and through this work she met a young Quaker artist named Joseph Pennell
, who had also had to face down parental disapproval to pursue his creative calling. This began a fruitful collaboration between writer and illustrator.
(1759–97) since the Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
published by her widower William Godwin
a few months after Wollstonecraft's death. This biography drew on three main sources: Godwin's Memoirs; a London publisher named C. Kegan Paul, who had written a sketch about the husband and wife a few years previously; and a curator at the British Library
, Richard Garnett
. It was published in 1884 by the Roberts Brothers
of Boston, as part of their Famous Women series, and also in London by the Walter Scott Publishing Company.
In June that year, Elizabeth Robins married Joseph Pennell. The couple accepted a travel writing commission from The Century Magazine
and set off for Europe, making two cycling journeys that year, firstly from London to Canterbury and then in France and Italy. Her uncle had travelled widely in Europe and settled in London, and so did the Pennells, basing themselves in the British capital for more than thirty years, with frequent visits to the Continent. They made a good working team, producing many articles and books together, and supporting each other in their work. For many years they opened their home on Thursday evenings as a literary and artistic salon; some of the people who enjoyed their hospitality included: "critics Sir Edmund Gosse
and William Archer
; artists Aubrey Beardsley
and James McNeil Whistler; authors Henry James
, Max Beerbohm
, Oscar Wilde
, and George Bernard Shaw
; and publishers John Lane
and William E. Henley." Pennell wrote of these gatherings in her memoirs, Our House and the People in It (1910), Our House and London Out of Our Windows (1912), and Nights: Rome & Venice in the Aesthetic Eighties, London & Paris in the Fighting Nineties (1916).
and the Pall Mall Gazette
. Scholar Meaghan Clarke ties "real-life women art journalists" such as Pennell to the literary figures and hacks that populate George Gissing
's New Grub Street
, as well as to the concept of the New Woman
. "Like journalism and, one might argue, because of journalism, the London art world was undergoing an intensive popularization during the 1880s and 1890s." Keeping up (as Clarke puts it) "a peripatetic pace in search of copy", Pennell went to Paris in May for the art salons, and regularly visited the London galleries (from Cork Street
and Bond Street
in the fashionable West End
to philanthropic art projects in the slums of the East End) to review the exhibitions. She wrote critically of Walter Besant
’s People’s Palace at Mile End
(similar in spirit to Samuel
and Henrietta Barnett’s St Jude’s at Whitechapel
). Kimberly Morse Jones writes that "Pennell's criticism constitutes a vital component of a wider movement in Victorian criticism that came to be known as the New Art Criticism", listing Alfred Lys Baldry, D.S. MacColl, George Moore
, R.A.M. Stevenson, Charles Whibley
and Frederick Wedmore
as fellow contributors to this movement.
, M. F. K. Fisher
, and Jane Grigson
," according to Jacqueline Block Williams. The Delights of Delicate Eating was reprinted in 2000, and Pennell appears as one of the "forgotten female aesthetes" that Shaeffer evaluates in her book of that title, one who "aimed to reconfigure meals as high art, employing the language of aestheticism to turn eating into an act of intellectual appreciation". Clarke holds that Pennell demonstrated a "continuity" between "her thoughts on other types of taste".
of Hannah Glasse
, which led to her becoming, in the view of culinary historian Cynthia D. Bertelsen, "one of the most well-known cookbook collectors in the world". Pennell compiled a bibliography of her culinary library, which appeared first in articles for The Atlantic and then in a book entitled My Cookery Books, focussing on C17 and C18 English writers. Much of this collection eventually went to the Library of Congress
, where a curator named Leonard N. Beck gave it a professional half-book-length evaluation.
(1899), a book very influential in the development of the Neopagan religion of Wicca
. The Pennells were friends and correspondents of the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and they wrote a lengthy biography of him in 1911. (Her fellow art critic Lady Colin Campbell
, whose famous portrait by Giovanni Boldini
Pennell had praised, was also close to Whistler.) Pennell also wrote a biography, after his death in 1928, of her husband.
's 1765 travel novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
. On a later leg of this journey they "wheeled" a tandem tricycle from Florence to Rome, and in 1886, now each on safety bicycle
s, they journeyed to Eastern Europe. This was at a key time in the history of the bicycle, and, of course, in the history of women's rights
as well, and they were both intertwined, in the figure of the New Woman
. Suffragists and social activists such as Susan B. Anthony
and Frances Willard
recognised the transformative power of the bicycle. By the time the Pennells had gone Over the Alps on a Bicycle (1898), Annie Londonderry
had already become the first woman to bicycle around the world. There was a ready audience for Robins Pennell's books, and the last-mentioned was chosen as a book of the month.
, settling in New York City
. After her husband's death, she moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, dying there in February 1936. Their books, especially her significant cookbook collection (reduced to 433) and a 300-strong collection on fine printing and bibliography, were bequeathed to the Library of Congress
. Her papers and those of her husband are held by university archives.
Pennell often made her contributions under nom de plumes such as "N.N." (No Name), "A.U." (Author Unknown) and "P.E.R." (her initials jumbled up).
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
, one of her uncle the folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland
Charles Godfrey Leland
Charles Godfrey Leland was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe....
, and one of her friend the painter Whistler. In recent years, her art criticism has come under scrutiny, and her food criticism has been reprinted.
Early life
She grew up in Philadelphia. Her mother died when she was very young, and she was sent away to a convent school from the ages of 8 to 17. When she returned to her father's home, he had remarried, and she was bored with the demands and restrictions of being a proper Catholic young lady. She wanted to work, and, with the encouragement of her uncle, the writer and folklorist Charles Godfrey LelandCharles Godfrey Leland
Charles Godfrey Leland was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe....
, she took up writing as a career. She started with articles in periodicals such as Atlantic Monthly, and through this work she met a young Quaker artist named Joseph Pennell
Joseph Pennell
Joseph Pennell was an American artist and author.-Biography:Born in Philadelphia, and first studied there, but like his compatriot and friend, James McNeill Whistler, he afterwards went to Europe and made his home in London...
, who had also had to face down parental disapproval to pursue his creative calling. This began a fruitful collaboration between writer and illustrator.
First book, marriage, move to London
Her first book was the first full-length biography of Mary WollstonecraftMary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
(1759–97) since the Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is William Godwin's biography of his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ....
published by her widower William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
a few months after Wollstonecraft's death. This biography drew on three main sources: Godwin's Memoirs; a London publisher named C. Kegan Paul, who had written a sketch about the husband and wife a few years previously; and a curator at the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
, Richard Garnett
Richard Garnett
Richard Garnett C.B. was a scholar, librarian, biographer and poet. He was son of Richard Garnett, an author, philologist and assistant keeper of printed books in the British Museum....
. It was published in 1884 by the Roberts Brothers
Roberts Brothers (publishers)
Messrs. Roberts Brothers were bookbinders and publishers in 19th-century Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1857 by Austin J. Roberts, John F. Roberts, and Lewis A. Roberts, the firm began publishing around the early 1860s...
of Boston, as part of their Famous Women series, and also in London by the Walter Scott Publishing Company.
In June that year, Elizabeth Robins married Joseph Pennell. The couple accepted a travel writing commission from The Century Magazine
The Century Magazine
The Century Magazine was first published in the United States in 1881 by The Century Company of New York City as a successor to Scribner's Monthly Magazine...
and set off for Europe, making two cycling journeys that year, firstly from London to Canterbury and then in France and Italy. Her uncle had travelled widely in Europe and settled in London, and so did the Pennells, basing themselves in the British capital for more than thirty years, with frequent visits to the Continent. They made a good working team, producing many articles and books together, and supporting each other in their work. For many years they opened their home on Thursday evenings as a literary and artistic salon; some of the people who enjoyed their hospitality included: "critics Sir Edmund Gosse
Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse CB was an English poet, author and critic; the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes.-Early life:...
and William Archer
William Archer (critic)
William Archer , Scottish critic, was born in Perth, and was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he received the degree of M.A. in 1876. He was the son of Thomas Archer....
; artists Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
and James McNeil Whistler; authors Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, Max Beerbohm
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, and George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
; and publishers John Lane
John Lane (publisher)
-Biography:Originally from Devon, where he was born into a farming family, Lane moved to London already in his teens. While working as a clerk at the Railway Clearing House, he acquired knowledge as an autodidact....
and William E. Henley." Pennell wrote of these gatherings in her memoirs, Our House and the People in It (1910), Our House and London Out of Our Windows (1912), and Nights: Rome & Venice in the Aesthetic Eighties, London & Paris in the Fighting Nineties (1916).
Art criticism
Pennell's main work was as an art and, later, a food critic, writing for periodicals including the Daily ChronicleDaily Chronicle
The Daily Chronicle was a British newspaper that was published from 1872 to 1930 when it merged with the Daily News to become the News Chronicle.-History:...
and the Pall Mall Gazette
Pall Mall Gazette
The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood...
. Scholar Meaghan Clarke ties "real-life women art journalists" such as Pennell to the literary figures and hacks that populate George Gissing
George Gissing
George Robert Gissing was an English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.-Early life:...
's New Grub Street
New Grub Street
New Grub Street is a novel by George Gissing published in 1891, which is set in the literary and journalistic circles of 1880s London. Gissing revised and shortened the novel for a French edition of 1901....
, as well as to the concept of the New Woman
New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century. The New Woman pushed the limits set by male-dominated society, especially as modeled in the plays of Norwegian Henrik Ibsen . "The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen's brain," according to a joke by Max Beerbohm...
. "Like journalism and, one might argue, because of journalism, the London art world was undergoing an intensive popularization during the 1880s and 1890s." Keeping up (as Clarke puts it) "a peripatetic pace in search of copy", Pennell went to Paris in May for the art salons, and regularly visited the London galleries (from Cork Street
Cork Street
Cork Street is a street in Mayfair in the West End of London, England. It is very well known in the British art world for the commercial art galleries that dominate the street. It is located to the north of Burlington House, which houses the Royal Academy, a leading British art institution...
and Bond Street
Bond Street
Bond Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London that runs north-south through Mayfair between Oxford Street and Piccadilly. It has been a fashionable shopping street since the 18th century and is currently the home of many high price fashion shops...
in the fashionable West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
to philanthropic art projects in the slums of the East End) to review the exhibitions. She wrote critically of Walter Besant
Walter Besant
Sir Walter Besant , was a novelist and historian who lived largely in London.His sister-in-law was Annie Besant.-Biography:...
’s People’s Palace at Mile End
Mile End
Mile End is an area within the East End of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is located east-northeast of Charing Cross...
(similar in spirit to Samuel
Samuel Augustus Barnett
Samuel Augustus Barnett was an Anglican clergyman and social reformer particularly associated with the establishment of the first university settlement, Toynbee Hall in east London in 1884....
and Henrietta Barnett’s St Jude’s at Whitechapel
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...
). Kimberly Morse Jones writes that "Pennell's criticism constitutes a vital component of a wider movement in Victorian criticism that came to be known as the New Art Criticism", listing Alfred Lys Baldry, D.S. MacColl, George Moore
George Moore (novelist)
George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s...
, R.A.M. Stevenson, Charles Whibley
Charles Whibley
Charles Whibley was an English literary journalist and author. Whibley’s style was described by Matthew as “often acerbic high-tory commentary”.-Life:...
and Frederick Wedmore
Frederick Wedmore
Frederick Wedmore was an English art critic and man of letters.Wedmore was born at Richmond Hill, Clifton, the eldest son of Thomas Wedmore of Druids Stoke, Stoke Bishop. His family were Quakers, and he was educated at a Quaker private school and then in Lausanne and Paris...
as fellow contributors to this movement.
Food criticism
Pennell's place in the literary history of cooking and eating has recently been reappraised, as she "paved the way for food writers such as Elizabeth DavidElizabeth David
Elizabeth David CBE was a British cookery writer who, in the mid-20th century, strongly influenced the revitalisation of the art of home cookery with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes.Born to an upper-class family, David rebelled against social norms of the...
, M. F. K. Fisher
M. F. K. Fisher
Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a preeminent American food writer. She was also a founder of the Napa Valley Wine Library. She wrote some 27 books, including a translation of The Physiology of Taste by Brillat-Savarin. Two volumes of her journals and correspondence came out shortly before her...
, and Jane Grigson
Jane Grigson
Jane Grigson was a notable English cookery writer.-Life and writings:...
," according to Jacqueline Block Williams. The Delights of Delicate Eating was reprinted in 2000, and Pennell appears as one of the "forgotten female aesthetes" that Shaeffer evaluates in her book of that title, one who "aimed to reconfigure meals as high art, employing the language of aestheticism to turn eating into an act of intellectual appreciation". Clarke holds that Pennell demonstrated a "continuity" between "her thoughts on other types of taste".
Cookbook collecting
To enable her to write these light but erudite columns, Pennell bought cookbooks to use as reference material. At one point she owned more than 1000 volumes, including a rare first editionFirst edition
The bibliographical definition of an edition includes all copies of a book printed “from substantially the same setting of type,” including all minor typographical variants.- First edition :...
of Hannah Glasse
Hannah Glasse
Hannah Glasse was an English cookery writer of the 18th century. She is best known for her cookbook, The Art of Cookery, first published in 1747...
, which led to her becoming, in the view of culinary historian Cynthia D. Bertelsen, "one of the most well-known cookbook collectors in the world". Pennell compiled a bibliography of her culinary library, which appeared first in articles for The Atlantic and then in a book entitled My Cookery Books, focussing on C17 and C18 English writers. Much of this collection eventually went to the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, where a curator named Leonard N. Beck gave it a professional half-book-length evaluation.
Biographies
Following her success with Mary Wollstonecraft, Pennell wrote other biographies, producing in 1906 the first one of her uncle, Charles Leland, who had written, or compiled, Aradia, or the Gospel of the WitchesAradia, or the Gospel of the Witches
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches is a book composed by the American folklorist Charles Leland that was published in 1899. It contains what he believed was the religious text of a group of pagan witches in Tuscany, Italy that documented their beliefs and rituals, although various historians and...
(1899), a book very influential in the development of the Neopagan religion of Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
. The Pennells were friends and correspondents of the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and they wrote a lengthy biography of him in 1911. (Her fellow art critic Lady Colin Campbell
Lady Colin Campbell
Lady Colin Campbell, , is a British writer, biographer, autobiographer, novelist, television and radio personality, known for her biography of Diana, Princess of Wales, The Real Diana, as well as other books on the Royal Family and the international elite.Campbell was born in Jamaica, the child of...
, whose famous portrait by Giovanni Boldini
Giovanni Boldini
Giovanni Boldini was an Italian genre and portrait painter. According to , he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting.-Early life:...
Pennell had praised, was also close to Whistler.) Pennell also wrote a biography, after his death in 1928, of her husband.
Cycle tourism
The final string to her bow was as a cyclist. She praised cycling in general, and the ease with which it enabled city dwellers to escape to the countryside, for its fresh air and views, and claimed that "there is no more healthful or more stimulating form of exercise; there is no physical pleasure greater than that of being borne along, at a good pace, over a hard, smooth road by your own exertions". She enjoyed touring, and disparaged racing. She started off cycling in the 1870s, while she still lived in Philadelphia. On moving to London, she and her husband soon acquired a tandem bicycle, and set off on the journey that she turned into A Canterbury Pilgrimage, a homage to Chaucer's work. Over the next few years, the pair took several trips together, including another literary pilgrimage, this time on the trail of Laurence SterneLaurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
's 1765 travel novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by the Irish-born English author Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his...
. On a later leg of this journey they "wheeled" a tandem tricycle from Florence to Rome, and in 1886, now each on safety bicycle
Safety bicycle
A safety bicycle is a type of bicycle that became very popular beginning in the late 1880s as an alternative to the penny-farthing or ordinary and is now the most common type of bicycle. Early bicycles of this style were known as safety bicycles because they were noted for, and marketed as, being...
s, they journeyed to Eastern Europe. This was at a key time in the history of the bicycle, and, of course, in the history of women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
as well, and they were both intertwined, in the figure of the New Woman
New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century. The New Woman pushed the limits set by male-dominated society, especially as modeled in the plays of Norwegian Henrik Ibsen . "The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen's brain," according to a joke by Max Beerbohm...
. Suffragists and social activists such as Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...
and Frances Willard
Frances Willard (suffragist)
Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution...
recognised the transformative power of the bicycle. By the time the Pennells had gone Over the Alps on a Bicycle (1898), Annie Londonderry
Annie Londonderry
Annie “Londonderry” Cohen Kopchovsky was the first woman to bicycle around the world. She was a free-thinking young woman, who reinvented herself as the daring “Annie Londonderry” — entrepreneur, athlete, and globetrotter.-Biography:...
had already become the first woman to bicycle around the world. There was a ready audience for Robins Pennell's books, and the last-mentioned was chosen as a book of the month.
Later life
The Pennells moved back to the United States towards the end of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, settling in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. After her husband's death, she moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, dying there in February 1936. Their books, especially her significant cookbook collection (reduced to 433) and a 300-strong collection on fine printing and bibliography, were bequeathed to the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. Her papers and those of her husband are held by university archives.
Pennell often made her contributions under nom de plumes such as "N.N." (No Name), "A.U." (Author Unknown) and "P.E.R." (her initials jumbled up).
External links
- Biographical Sketch of Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell
- Biographical Sketch of Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell, and list of papers held by University of Pennsylvania
- Works by Elizabeth Robins Pennell at the Internet Archive
- Joseph and Elizabeth R. Pennell's papers at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin
Further reading
- Schaffer, Talia. The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England. University of Virginia Press, 2008.