Bessie Rayner Parkes
Elizabeth Rayner Belloc (née Parkes; 16 June 1829 – 23 March 1925) was one of the most prominent English feminists and campaigners for women's rights in Victorian times and also a poet, essayist and journalist. Early life Bessie Rayner Parkes was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, daughter of Joseph Parkes (1796–1865), a prosperous solicitor and a liberal with Radical sympathies, and Elizabeth ("Eliza") Rayner Priestley (1797–1877), granddaughter of the scientist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). Eliza always considered herself an American, having been born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Although not in great sympathy with her daughter over Bessie's strong wish to make changes in the status of women, Elizabeth nevertheless loved her dearly and did not actively oppose her; Joseph Parkes's support for his daughter's aspirations was moderate. Unusually for girls of her background, Bessie was sent to a progressive Unitarian boarding school ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the List of English districts by population, largest local authority district in England by population and the second-largest city in Britain – commonly referred to as the second city of the United Kingdom – with a population of million people in the city proper in . Birmingham borders the Black Country to its west and, together with the city of Wolverhampton and towns including Dudley and Solihull, forms the West Midlands conurbation. The royal town of Sutton Coldfield is incorporated within the city limits to the northeast. The urban area has a population of 2.65million. Located in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands region of England, Birmingham is considered to be the social, cultural, financial and commercial centre of the Midland ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Governess
A governess is a woman employed as a private tutor, who teaches and trains a child or children in their home. A governess often lives in the same residence as the children she is teaching; depending on terms of their employment, they may or may not fulfill the limited role of an au pair, Cook (domestic worker), cook, and/or maid as a secondary function. In contrast to a nanny, the primary role of a governess is teaching, rather than meeting the physical needs of children; hence a governess is usually in charge of school-aged children, rather than babies. The position of governess used to be common in affluent European families before the First World War, especially in the countryside where no suitable school existed nearby and when parents preferred to educate their children at home rather than send them away to boarding school for months at a time, and varied across time and countries. Governesses were usually in charge of girls and younger boys. When a boy was old enough, he ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of political economy, political economy, education, museology, geology, botany, ornithology, literature, history, and myth. Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even The King of the Golden River, a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (9 June 1836 – 17 December 1917) was an English physician and suffragist. She is known for being the first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon and as a co-founder and dean of the London School of Medicine for Women, which was the first medical school in Britain to train women as doctors. She was the first female dean of a British medical school, the first woman in Britain to be elected to a school board and, as mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female mayor in Britain. Early life Elizabeth was born in Whitechapel, London, and was the second of eleven children of Newson Garrett (1812–1893), from Leiston, Suffolk, and his wife, Louisa (born Dunnell; 1813–1903), from London. Her paternal ancestors had been ironworkers in East Suffolk since the early seventeenth century. Newson was the youngest of three sons and not academically inclined, although he possessed the family's entrepreneurial spirit. When he finished school, Newso ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray ( ; 18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was an English novelist and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1847–1848 novel '' Vanity Fair'', a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel '' The Luck of Barry Lyndon'', which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick. Thackeray was born in Calcutta, British India, and was sent to England after his father's death in 1815. He studied at various schools and briefly attended Trinity College, Cambridge, before leaving to travel Europe. Thackeray squandered much of his inheritance on gambling and unsuccessful newspapers. He turned to journalism to support his family, primarily working for ''Fraser's Magazine'', ''The Times'', and '' Punch''. His wife Isabella suffered from mental illness. Thackeray gained fame with his novel ''Vanity Fair'' and produced several other notable works. He unsuccessfully ran for Parliament in 1857 and edited the ''Cornhill Magazine' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (''née'' Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer detailed studies of Victorian era, Victorian society, including the lives of the very poor. Her first novel, ''Mary Barton'', was published in 1848. Her only biography ''The Life of Charlotte Brontë'', published in 1857, was controversial and significant in establishing the Brontë family's lasting fame. Among Gaskell's best known novels are ''Cranford (novel), Cranford'' (1851–1853), ''North and South (Gaskell novel), North and South'' (1854–1855), and ''Wives and Daughters'' (1864–1866), all of which have been adapted for television by the BBC. Early life She was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson on 29 September 1810 in Lindsey Row, Chelsea, London, now 93 Cheyne Walk. The doctor who delivered her was Anthony Todd Thomson, whose sister Catherine later became Gaskell's step ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionism, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalism, Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans," and Walt Whitman called Emerson his "master". Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, "Nature (Emerson), Nature". His speech "The American Scholar," given in 1837, was called America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Richardson, p. 263. Emerson wrote most of Essays (Emerson), his important essays as lectures and then revised them ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in ''Principles of Biology'' (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book ''On the Origin of Species''. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism. Riggenbach, Jeff (24 April 2011The Real William Graham Sumner, Mises Institute. Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolutionism, evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, astronomy, biology, sociology, and psychology. During h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell (3 February 182131 May 1910) was an English-American physician, notable as the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, and the first woman on the Medical Register of the General Medical Council for the United Kingdom. Blackwell played an important role in both the United States and the United Kingdom as a social reformer, and was a pioneer in promoting education for women in medicine. Her contributions remain celebrated with the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal, awarded annually to a woman who has made a significant contribution to the promotion of women in medicine. Blackwell was not initially interested in a career in medicine. She became a schoolteacher in order to support her family. This occupation was seen as suitable for women during the 1800s; however, she soon found it unsuitable for her. Blackwell's interest in medicine was sparked after a friend fell ill and remarked that, had a female doctor cared for her, she might not have suffered ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anna Mary Howitt
Anna Mary Howitt, Mrs Watts (15 January 1824 – 23 July 1884) was an English Pre-Raphaelite professional (history) painter, professional writer, women's rights activist and spiritualist. Following a health crisis in 1856, she exhibited rarely as a painter, but continued to work as a professional writer. She became a pioneering drawing medium. It is likely the term "automatic drawing" originated with her. She was involved in the married women property committee. Painter, writer and women's rights activist Anna Mary Howitt was born in Nottingham as the eldest surviving child of the Quaker writers and publishers William Howitt (1792–1879) and Mary Howitt, Mary Botham (1799–1888). She also spent her childhood in Esher. She started to illustrate her mother’s literary work at the age of 10. When her father William Howitt showed her designs of the heads of ''The Seven Temptations'' to Henry Sass, the principal of the Sass’s Academy, several other artists, including his succes ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Browning
Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian literature, Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax. His early long poems Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession, ''Pauline'' (1833) and Paracelsus (poem), ''Paracelsus'' (1835) were acclaimed, but his reputation dwindled for a time – his 1840 poem Sordello (poem), ''Sordello'' was seen as wilfully obscure – and took over a decade to recover, by which time he had moved from Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelleyan forms to a more personal style. In 1846, he married fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Barrett and moved to Italy. By her death in 1861, he had published the collection Men and Women (poetry collection), ''Men and Women'' (1855). His Dramatis Personæ (poetry collection), ''Dramatis Personae'' (1864) and book-leng ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologised after her death. Her work received renewed attention following the feminist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, and greater recognition of women writers in English. Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven. Her mother's collection of her poems forms one of the largest extant literature, extant collections of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15, she became ill, suffering intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. Later in life, she also developed lung problems, possibly tuberculosis. She took laudanum for the pain from an early age, which is likely to have contributed to her frail health. In the 1840s, Elizabeth was introduced to literary society through her distant cousin and patron John Kenyon ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |