Let’s be clear. We are all equal under the law. However, even in these more modern times that is not an absolute and still remains a distant ambition for many. In the days when Britain ruled the waves and bestrode the world as its policeman and plunderer in chief it also subjugated half of its own people to second class status. Women were chattel and property. There were some exceptions based on wealth and birthright but for the overwhelming majority your lot was to fall in with the rules and do as you were told. Many did.But whilst male society sought to place obstacles in the path to equality, it could not deny their literary talents, which many times they circumvented by using male pseudonyms. However, the soaring sales of magazines and periodicals during the Victorian Age meant they had voracious appetites for literature, whatever the sex of its gender.Dozens of authors appeared to fill the need. Narratives had new ideas. Characters were emboldened by societal changes and the female voice taking responsibility.The women included here are talents that dazzle. Put them up against anyone and they rise to the top. Whether they remain with an avid readership today or faded to obscurity with the passing of the times their quality remains undimmed. 1 - Women of Wonder - Suicide - An Introduction2 - The Legacy by Virginia Woolf3 - The Voyage by Katherine Mansfield4 - Paul's Case by Willa Cather5 - Cohen of Trinity by Amy Levy6 - The Mourner by Mary Shelley7 - The Quadroons by Lydia Maria Child8 - An Outcast of the People by Bithia Mary Croker9 - Blessed Are the Meek by Mary Webb10 - When Spirits Steal by Philippa Forest11 - The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon12 - The Oculist by Catherine Wells13 - Sokratics in the Strand by Amy Levy
A haunting tale of passion set in Shropshire in the 1800s
Born at the time of Waterloo in the wild countryside of Shropshire, England, Prudence Sarn is a passionate girl, cursed with a harelip-her "precious bane." She is cursed for it, too, by the superstitious people amongst whom she lives. Prue loves two things: the remote countryside of her birthplace and, hopelessly, Kester Woodseaves, the weaver. The tale of how Kester gradually discerns Prue's true beauty is set against the tragic drama of Prue's brother, Gideon, a man who is out of harmony with the natural world and whose recklessness may ensnare them all in tragedy.
Winner of the 1926 Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Prize, which was similarly awarded to such books as Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, and Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm, Precious Bane is a novel that haunts us with its beauty and its timeless truths about our deepest hopes.
Mary Webb (1881-1927) was an English Romantic novelist, short story writer and poet whose work is set chiefly in Shropshire.
'Mr. Tallent's Ghost' is an amusing tale about an eccentric writer who likes to read his appalling and tedious novels aloud to his relatives...or indeed anyone who will listen. He persuades a lawyer to draw up a will devoting his entire fortune to funding the publication of his writing. Shortly after this, news of Mr. Tallent's death arrives.
The disinherited relations dispute the will vigorously, and soon after this, the ghost of Mr. Tallent begins to haunt the relatives and the executor. Worse still, the ghost is reading his dreadful novels to them aloud. One by one the relatives are consigned to mental institutions. The lawyer, who is also Mr. Tallent's executor, holds out longest...and then he makes an extraordinary discovery.
