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Emily Davies and the Mid-Victorian Women's Movement

Online ISBN:
9780198910268
Print ISBN:
9780198910237
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Emily Davies and the Mid-Victorian Women's Movement

John Hendry
John Hendry
Fellow of Girton College, University of Cambridge
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Published online:
20 June 2024
Published in print:
30 May 2024
Online ISBN:
9780198910268
Print ISBN:
9780198910237
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book combines the first scholarly biography of Emily Davies, a central figure in the mid-Victorian women’s movement, with a radically new account of that movement, focusing on its rapid growth, increasing acceptance, and subsequent division. With Emily Davies as its focus, it traces the movement as it grew from a small network of radical Unitarian families in the 1850s into a major presence in the intellectual life of Britain in the 1860s, cutting across religious and political boundaries. At the centre of operations, the socially and politically conservative but fiercely determined Davies found common ground with the leading intellectual churchman of the day and understood better than most of her colleagues the values that led people to resist change, even while accepting at least part of the women’s case. As the movement grew in size and influence it came to encompass a growing range of social and political ideals and priorities, and by the 1870s it had effectively split into three separate strands, each with its own subdivisions, one focused on legal change and women’s rights, one on the protection of vulnerable women, and one on the improved education of girls and young women. Following Davies’s particular priorities and strategic instincts, the book focuses on the battle for secondary and especially university education, but the achievements of all three sets of campaigns are assessed and compared in the context of the different priorities guiding them.

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