Elizabeth Gaskell, 1810-1865 from http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/gaskell.htm Joanna Boyce. Head of Mrs Eaton. 1861. Anna Blunden. 'For only one short hour' (Song of the Shirt). 1854

8:188 Victorian Women Writers Fall 2001

8:188 Victorian Women Writers

The sixty-four years of Victoria’s reign saw a surge in literature in (almost) all genres, by women of all social classes, who directed their literary work toward a wide range of social and artistic ends. We will explore some of this variety in the writings of the novelists Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot, the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Augusta Webster, the short-story writers and autobiographers Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant and Ellen Johnston, and the polemicist Frances Power Cobbe. The course will begin with a few days of background material devoted to the lives of working and middle-class women, and to nineteenth-century debates about “the woman question.” From time to time we will view slides of Victorian women’s art and listen to examples of their music. Attendance is mandatory and much of class time will be devoted to discussion. I will ask students to prepare discussion questions, submit journal entries to our class web page, and submit either three shorter or one long creative or research project.