The Woman Who Did

by Grant Allen, 1st World Publishing

Overview

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Mrs. Dewsbury's lawn was held by those who knew it the loveliest in Surrey. The smooth and springy sward that stretched in front of the house was all composed of a tiny yellow clover. It gave beneath the foot like the pile on velvet. One's gaze looked forth from it upon the endless middle distances of the oak-clad Weald, with the uncertain blue line of the South Downs in the background. Ridge behind ridge, the long, low hills of paludina limestone stood out in successive tiers, each thrown up against its neighbor by the misty haze that broods eternally over the wooded valley; till, roaming across them all, the eye rested at last on the rearing scarp of Chanctonbury Ring, faintly pencilled on the furthest skyline. Shadowy phantoms of dim heights framed the verge to east and west. Alan Merrick drank it in with profound satisfaction. After those sharp and clear-cut Italian outlines, hard as lapis lazuli, the mysterious vagueness, the pregnant suggestiveness, of our English scenery strikes the imagination; and Alan was fresh home from an early summer tour among the Peruginesque solidities of the Umbrian Apennines. "How beautiful it all is, after all," he said, turning to his entertainer. "In Italy 'tis the background the painter dwells upon; in England, we look rather at the middle distance."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421850801
Publisher:	1st World Publishing
Publication date:	08/02/2013
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Canadian scientific author and novelist Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (February 24, 1848 - October 25, 1899) received his education in England. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, he actively promoted evolution in public. Allen was born in Kingston, Canada West, close to Wolfe Island (known as Ontario after Confederation). Joseph Antisell Allen, a Protestant pastor from Dublin, Ireland, was his father. Allen attended Merton College in Oxford and King Edward's School in Birmingham for his education. He joined Queen's Institution, a Jamaican black college, as a professor in his mid-20s. He was influenced by the associationist psychology of Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain. He produced 30 books between 1884 and 1899, including the controversial The Woman Who Did. The Type-writer Girl and Olive Pratt Rayner were pen names used by English novelist Grant Allen. With the publication of The British Barbarians, he made history in the field of science fiction (1895). On October 25, 1899, Grant Allen passed away from liver cancer at his house in Haslemere, Surrey, England. Before finishing Hilda Wade, he passed away.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Grant Allen: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Woman Who Did

Appendix A: Grant Allen on Women, Sex, and Marriage

1. From “Woman’s Place in Nature” (1889)
2. From “Plain Words on the Woman Question” (1889)
3. From “The Girl of the Future” (1890)
4. From “The New Hedonism” (1894)
5. From “About the New Hedonism” (1894)
6. From “Introduction” to The British Barbarians (1895)

Appendix B: Sources of Allen’s Views on the “Sex Problem”

1. Percy Bysshe Shelley, from Notes to Queen Mab (1813)
2. John Stuart Mill, from The Subjection of Women (1878)
3. Herbert Spencer, from The Principles of Sociology (1885)
4. August Bebel, from Woman in the Past, Present, and Future (1885)
5. Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling, from “The Woman Question” (1886)
6. Karl Pearson, from “Socialism and Sex” (1888)
7. Olive Schreiner, from “Three Dreams in a Desert” (1894)

Appendix C: The Marriage Debate 1888-1895

1. Mona Caird, from “Marriage” (1888)
2. Elizabeth Rachel Chapman, from “Marriage Rejection and Marriage Reform” (1888)
3. Harry Quilter, ed., from Is Marriage a Failure? (1888)
4. Mona Caird, from “Ideal Marriage” (1888)
5. Clementina Black, from “On Marriage: A Criticism” (1890)
6. Edward Carpenter, from Marriage in Free Society (1894)
7. Beswicke Ancrum, from “The Sexual Problem” (1894)
8. E.M.S., from “Some Modern Ideas about Marriage” (1895)

Appendix D: The Reception of The Woman Who Did

1. H[arold] F[rederic], from the New York Times (3 and 17 February 1895)
2. [W.T. Stead], from Review of Reviews (February 1895)
3. a. Percy Addleshaw, from Academy (2 March 1895)
   b. Grant Allen, from letter to Academy (9 March 1895)
4. a. [H.G. Wells], from Saturday Review (9 March 1895)
   b. Grant Allen, from letter to Saturday Review (16 March 1895)
5. From Spectator (30 March 1895)
6. From Humanitarian (March 1895)
7. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, from Contemporary Review (May 1895)
8. Sarah A. Tooley, from Humanitarian (March 1896)
9. Richard Le Gallienne, from Retrospective Reviews (1896)

Appendix E: Two Parodies

1. W.L. Alden, from Idler (February–July 1895)
2. From Punch (30 March 1895)

Works Cited and Recommended Reading

Editorial Reviews

Ruddick’s new edition of The Woman Who Did makes a wonderful addition to Broadview’s growing list of key fin de siècle texts. Placing Grant Allen’s polemical short novel in the context both of his career as a public intellectual and of ongoing debates about sex, marriage, gender, and eugenics, the introduction and selected primary sources help explain the stakes behind the uproar that surrounded the novel’s publication. The supplementary material on marriage debates of the 1880s and 1890s, as well as the selections from initial reviews of the novel, are particularly helpful in this regard. A splendid resource for those interested in the Victorian fin de siècle, and the nineteenth-century Woman Question.” — Kathy Alexis Psomiades, Duke University

“This meticulously edited reprint of Grant Allen’s notorious 1895 novel is an important and very welcome addition to Broadview Press’s increasingly rich library of once-popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts by women that have, for many years now, languished in archives accessible only to scholars. Nicholas Ruddick’s thoughtful introduction and the appendices—which include contemporary reviews, source materials, excerpts from the Marriage Debate, 1888-1895, and key non-fiction prose writings by Grant Allen—will be invaluable resources.” — Ann L. Ardis, University of Delaware

From the Publisher

"This meticulously edited reprint of Grant Allen's notorious 1895 novel is an important and very welcome addition to Broadview Press's increasingly rich library of once-popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts by women that have, for many years now, languished in archives accessible only to scholars. Nicholas Ruddick's thoughtful introduction and the appendices—which include contemporary reviews, source materials, excerpts from the Marriage Debate, 1888-1895, and key non-fiction prose writings by Grant Allen—will be invaluable resources."

Ann L. Ardis University of Delaware

"Ruddick's new edition of The Woman Who Did makes a wonderful addition to Broadview's growing list of key fin de siècle texts. Placing Grant Allen's polemical short novel in the context both of his career as a public intellectual and of ongoing debates about sex, marriage, gender, and eugenics, the introduction and selected primary sources help explain the stakes behind the uproar that surrounded the novel's publication. The supplementary material on marriage debates of the 1880s and 1890s, as well as the selections from initial reviews of the novel, are particularly helpful in this regard. A splendid resource for those interested in the Victorian fin de siècle, and the nineteenth-century Woman Question."

Kathy Alexis Psomiades Duke University