Celebrates the pioneering achievements of Unitarian women - writers, artists, social reformers, suffrage activists, peace campaigners, politicians, and preachers - who helped to shape our modern world for 200 years from the mid-18th century.
Rational Dissent was a branch of Protestant religious nonconformity which emerged to prominence in England between c. 1770 and c. 1800. While small, the movement provoked fierce opposition from both Anglicans and Orthodox Dissenters.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s writings abound in references to a cultural materiality encompassing different types of fabric, stuffs, calicoes, chintzes and fine-point lace. These are not merely the motifs of the Realist genre but reveal a complex polysemy. Utilizing a metonymic examination of these tropes, this volume exposes the dramatic structural and socio-economic upheaval generated by industrialization, urbanization and the widening sphere of empire. The material evidence testifies to the technological and production innovations evolving diachronically for the period, and the evolution of Manchester as the industrial ‘Cottonpolis’ that clothed the world by the 1840s. This volume analyses Gaskell’s manipulation of the materiality, arguing its firm roots lie in the quotidian of women’s domestic and provincial life within the growing ranks of the middle classes. Exploring Gaskell’s tactile imagination, an embodied relationship with fabrics and sewing, a function of her daily life from an early age, this volume provides insight into the sensory aspects of cloth and its ability to stir affective responses, emotions and memories, whereby worn fabrics and even the absence of previous textile treasures, is poignant, recreating layers of recollection. This book aims to restore the pulsating, dynamic context of ordinary women’s dressed lives and presents innovative interpretations of Gaskell’s texts.
As historians have gradually come to recognize, the involvement of women was central to the anti-slavery cause in both Britain and the United States. Like their male counterparts, women abolitionists did not all speak with one voice. Among the major differences between women were their religious affiliations, an aspect of their commitment that has not been studied in detail. Yet it is clear that the desire to live out and practice their religious beliefs inspired many of the women who participated in anti-slavery activities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This book examines the part that the traditions, practices, and beliefs of English Protestant dissent and the American Puritan and evangelical traditions played in women's anti-slavery activism. Focusing particularly on Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Unitarian women, the essays in this volume move from accounts of individual women's participation in the movement as printers and writers, to assessments of the negotiations and the occasional conflicts between different denominational groups and their anti-slavery impulses. Together the essays in this volume explore how the tradition of English Protestant Dissent shaped the American abolitionist movement, and the various ways in which women belonging to the different denominations on both sides of the Atlantic drew on their religious beliefs to influence the direction of their anti-slavery movements. The collection provides a nuanced understanding of why these women felt compelled to fight for the end of slavery in their respective countries.
The British Christian Women’s Movement charts the British Christian women’s movement and its inception in the post-sixties decades, amid new currents generated in the British denominational churches, and the wider current of Women’s Liberation. Focusing on Christian women’s concern with the position of women in the church, this book identifies core Christian women’s theology which affirms a (rehabilitated) ‘new Eve in Christ’, and contrasts with a paradigm shift taking shape in North American feminist theology. It argues that this divergence is primarily because of the effect of prolonged Church of England women’s ordination debates upon the ethos of the British Christian women’s movement.
Recent criticism is now fully appreciating the nuanced and complex contribution made by Dissenters to the culture and ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain. This is the first sustained study of a Dissenting family - the Aikins - from the 1740s to the 1860s. Essays by literary critics, historians of religion and science, and geographers explore and contextualize the achievements of this remarkable family, including John Aikin senior, tutor at the celebrated Warrington Academy, and his children, poet Anna Letitia Barbauld, and John Aikin junior, literary physician and editor. The latter's children in turn were leading professionals and writers in the early Victorian era. This study provides new perspectives on the social and cultural importance of the family and their circle - an untold story of collaboration and exchange, and a narrative which breaks down period boundaries to set Enlightenment and Victorian culture in dialogue.
This title was first published in 2002. This book presents a timely study of a neglected British Christian women's movement. Jenny Daggers charts the inception of the movement in the exciting times of the post-sixties decades, amid new currents generated in the British denominational churches, and the wider current of Women's Liberation. Focusing on Christian women's concern with the position of women in the church, this book identifies a core Christian women's theology which affirms a (rehabilitated) 'new Eve in Christ', and so contrasts with a concurrent paradigm shift taking shape in North American feminist theology. Daggers argues that this divergence is primarily due to the effect of the prolonged Church of England women's ordination debate upon the ethos of the British Christian women's movement.
The growth of women's ordained ministry is one of the most remarkable and significant developments in the recent history of Christianity. This collection of essays brings together leading contributors from both academic and church contexts to explore Christian experiences of ordaining women in theological, sociological, historical and anthropological perspective. Key questions include: How have national, denominational and ecclesial cultures shaped the different ways in which women's ordination is debated and/or enacted? What differences have women's ordained ministry, and debates on women's ordination, made in various church contexts? What 'unfinished business' remains (in both congregational and wider ministry)? How have Christians variously conceived ordained ministry which includes both women and men? How do ordained women and men work together in practice? What have been the particular implications for female clergy? And for male clergy? What distinctive issues are raised by women's entry into senior ordained/leadership positions? How do episcopal and non-episcopal traditions differ in this?
Did women have an Enlightenment? This path-breaking volume of interdisciplinary essays by forty leading scholars provides a detailed picture of the controversial, innovative role played by women and gender issues in the age of light.
Musaicum Books presents to you memoirs, biographies and stories about the most incredible women in history, their lives and their legacies: Eighty Years and More by Elizabeth Cady Stanton Helen Keller: The Story of My Life Harriet Tubman, the Moses of Her People Reminiscences by Julia Ward Howe My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst The Autobiography of Mother Jones Sweeper in the Sky: The Life of Maria Mitchell Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography The Life of Florence Nightingale The Grimké Sisters Roswitha the Nun Marie de France Mechthild of Magdeburg Countess of Artois Christine de Pisan Agnes Sorel Alcestis Antigone Iphigenia Paula Catherine Douglas Lady Jane Grey Flora Macdonald Madame Roland Grace Darling Sister Dora Florence Nightingale Lucretia Sappho Aspasia of Pericles Xantippe Aspasia of Cyrus Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi Portia Octavia Cleopatra Mariamne Julia Domna Zenobia Valeria Eudocia Hypatia The Wife of Maximus The Lady Rowena Olga The Lady Elfrida The Countess of Tripoli Jane, Countess of Mountfort Laura de Sade The Countess of Richmond Elizabeth Woodville Jane Shore Catharine of Arragon Augustina Saragoza Charlotte Brontë… Marie Antoinette Sarah Siddons Mrs Grant Elizabeth Inchbald Elizabeth Hamilton Countess de Vemieiro Joanna Baillie Josephine Anne Radcliffe Miss Edgeworth Charlotte Corday Madame de Stael Madame de la Rochejaquelein Madame Recamier Mary Brunton Felicia Hemans Augustina Saragoza Charlotte Bronte Queen Anne Esther Johnson Esther Vanhomrigh Mary Astell Madame des Ursins Lady Grizel Jerviswoode Madame de Pontchartrain Elizabeth Halkett Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Madame du Deffand Phœbe Bentley Marquise du Chatelet Lady Huntingdon Flora Macdonald Madame Roland Grace Darling Sister Dora Maria Theresa Meta Moller Elizabeth Blackwell Lætitia Barbauld Hannah More Anna Seward Catherine Cockburn Elizabeth Berkeleigh...