A startling reevaluation of Lady Byron’s marriage and the untold story of her complex life as single mother and progressive force.The center of public attention after her tumultuous marriage to Lord Byron, Annabella Milbanke transformed herself from a neglected wife into a figure of incredible resilience and social vision. After she and her infant child were cast out of their home, she was left to navigate the stifling and unsupportive social environment of Regency...

A Riveting and brilliant work of biography. The story of two great English poets, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, whose work was immediately recognized and adored by their contemporaries, whose courtship ranks with the great love stories of all time -- and in whose marriage romance was not merely sustained but intensified.We enter their story through the sealed Victorian world of the Barretts of Wimpole Street: Elizabeth, at thirty-nine, a poet of international fame, a child...

From the much acclaimed author of Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, a new book that retrieves the lives of Victorian women--writers, actresses, poets, journalists, sculptors, and social reformers--celebrated in their day but forgotten in ours.Julia Markus focuses in particular on the American Charlotte Cushman, the most famous English-speaking actress of her day, and on the Scottish Jane Welsh Carlyle, a brilliant London hostess who gave...

Acclaimed biographer Julia Markus has written an unprecedented and illuminating portrait of the brilliant, tortured, and controversial James Anthony Froude—the quintessential Victorian, father of modern biography, historian, diplomat, and prodigal son.J. Anthony Froude expertly captures the roiling cultural history of a century through one man’s dynamic life. From his birth in 1818 to his death in 1894, J. Anthony Froude embodied the issues and complexities of his time. Through the...

This thoroughly engaging and richly researched book presents a compelling portrait of Mary Robinson–darling of the London stage, mistress to the most powerful men in England, feminist thinker, and bestselling author, described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a woman of undoubted genius.”One of the most flamboyant free spirits of the late eighteenth century, Mary Robinson led a life that was marked by reversals of fortune. After being abandoned by her merchant father, who left Englan...

In her study of the married couple as the smallest political unit, Phyllis Rose uses the marriages of five Victorian writers who wrote about their own lives with unusual candor: Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot--née Marian Evans.

Pulitzer Prize finalist: "The definitive biography" of the Victorian-era writer and historian ( The Times Literary Supplement).A Pulitzer finalist that draws upon years of research and unpublished letters, Thomas Carlyle examines the life of the Victorian genius. Carlyle was the author of Sartor Resartus and The French Revolution: A History, and he possessed one of literature's ...

“You’ll call this sentimental–perhaps–but then a dog somehow represents the private side of life, the play side,” Virginia Woolf confessed to a friend. And it is this private, playful side, the richness and power of the bond between five great women writers and their dogs, that Maureen Adams celebrates in this deeply engaging book.In Shaggy Muses, we visit Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Flush, the golden Cocker Spaniel who danced the poet away from death, back to life and human lov...

The combination of Mary Wollstonecraft works, with her efforts to live a revolutionary inner and outer life has no equal. In her richly detailed, all-encompassing biography of the first major feminist in England, Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd highlights her intellectual and sexual dilemmas, her glamorous and tumultuous life and loves.Since the first publication of Mary Wollstonecraft: A revolutionary Life in2000, further historical evidence has been discovered – ...

Personal advertisements have been around as long as newspapers themselves. If you're curious about what a "matrimonial ad" from the 1800s looked like, this is your book. Read it aloud and marvel at missives like:"Gentleman, 38, height 5 ft., 9 in., weight 170, black hair, brown eyes, fair complexion, wishes to meet lady, 35 to 38, refined, normal weight, good looking, good teeth, not tired of society, and invest and accept half interest in a manufacturing business; can handle her o...

A rich and fascinating account of the lives of Victorian governesses, exploring nineteenth-century attitudes to women, family and class.If a nineteenth century lady had neither a husband to support her nor money of her own, almost her only recourse was to live in someone else's household and educate their children - in particular, their daughters.Marooned within the confines of other people's lives, neither servants nor family members, governesses occupied ...