Records of Girlhood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Women's Childhoods / Edition 1

by Valerie Sanders

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780754601487
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/26/2000
Series:	The Nineteenth Century Series
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Valerie Sanders

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction; Amelia Opie; Dorothea Herbert; Mary Martha Sherwood; Mary Somerville; Lady Caroline Lamb; ’Charlotte Elizabeth’; Anna Jameson; Mary Howitt; Sara Coleridge; Harriet Martineau; Fanny Kemble; Elizabeth Sewell; Frances Power Cobbe; Charlotte M. Yonge; Annie Besant; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'As well as being a useful resource for scholars of the nineteenth century in general, and of women's autobiography in particular, Records of Girlhood is a consistently entertaining and illuminating volume which deserves to be widely read.' Journal of Victorian Culture

From the Publisher