A Widening Sphere Routledge Revivals

First published in 1977, this book is a companion volume to Suffer and Be Still. It looks at the widening sphere of women’s activities in the Victorian age and testifies to the dual nature of the legal and social constraints of the period: on the one hand, the ideal of the perfect lady and the restrictive laws governing marriage and property posed limits to women’s independence; on the other hand, some Victorian women chose to live lives of great variety and complexity. By uncovering new data and reinterpreting old, the contributors in this volume debunk some of the myths surrounding the Victorian woman and alter stereotypes on which many of today’s social customs are based.

First published in 1977, this book is a companion volume to Suffer and Be Still. It looks at the widening sphere of women’s activities in the Victorian age and testifies to the dual nature of the legal and social constraints of the period: on the one hand, the ideal of the perfect lady and the restrictive laws governing marriage and property posed limits to women’s independence; on the other hand, some Victorian women chose to live lives of great variety and complexity. By uncovering new data and reinterpreting old, the contributors in this volume debunk some of the myths surrounding the Victorian woman and alter stereotypes on which many of today’s social customs are based.

First published in 1988, this encyclopedia serves as an overview and point of entry to the complex interdisciplinary field of Victorian studies. The signed articles, which cover persons, events, institutions, topics, groups and artefacts in Great Britain between 1837 and 1901, have been written by authorities in the field and contain bibliographies to provide guidelines for further research. The work is intended for undergraduates and the general reader, and also as a starting point for graduates who wish to explore new fields.

First published in 1936, this book surveys the changing place of women across the contemporaneous Muslim world, focusing on several nations where they constitute a demographic majority — Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Turkey, Syria — and one where they do not, namely India. It begins by outlining some of the areas of change, for example regarding the veil, purdah and divorce. This is followed by in depth examinations of the progress of female education, their changing economic roles, improving health standards, their widening interests and the pressure for change on Islam in general. This title is would be of interest to students of the sociology of religion and the contemporary position of women in Muslim societies.

First published in 1986, the aim of this book is to present some of the changing thinking on popular writing to a wider audience in view of the enormous growth of mass culture after the war, but also to offer a historical perspective on a specific form of popular fiction: the romance. The essays collected here reflect diverse positions and methods in the current debate: sociological, psychoanalytic and literary. Some focus more on texts or readers, others concentrate on theoretical questions about narrative or ideology. All of the essays, however, view popular forms and their uses historical in historical context — rejecting the notion they are a contaminated by-product of industrialism.

First published in 1992, Subject to Others considers the intersection between late seventeenth- to early nineteenth-century British female writers and the colonial debate surrounding slavery and abolition. Beginning with an overview that sets the discussion in context, Moira Ferguson then chronicles writings by Anglo-Saxon women and one African-Caribbean ex-slave woman, from between 1670 and 1834, on the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of slaves. Through studying the writings of around thirty women in total, Ferguson concludes that white British women, as a result of their class position, religious affiliation and evolving conceptions of sexual difference, constructed a colonial discourse about Africans in general and slaves in particular. Crucially, the feminist propensity to align with anti-slavery activism helped to secure the political self-liberation of white British women. A fascinating and detailed text, this volume will be of particular interest to undergraduate students researching colonial British female writers, early feminist discourse, and the anti-slavery debate.

First published in 1981, this book brings together different types of work by numerous fragmented groups in the field of Marxist history and puts them in dialogue with each other. It takes stock of then recent work, explores the main new lines, and looks at the political and ideological circumstances shaping the direction of historical work, past and present. The scope of the book is international with contributions on African history, fascism and anti-fascism, French labour history, and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It also incorporates feminist history and gives attention to some of the leading questions raised for social history by the women’s movement.

This book examines the performance of ‘Britishness’ on the musical stage. Covering a tumultuous period in British history, it offers a fresh look at the vitality and centrality of the musical stage, as a global phenomenon in late-Victorian popular culture and beyond. Through a re-examination of over fifty archival play-scripts, the book comprises seven interconnected stories told in two parts. Part One focuses on domestic and personal identities of ‘Britishness’, and how implicit anxieties and contradictions of nationhood, class and gender were staged as part of the popular cultural condition. Broadening in scope, Part Two offers a revisionary reading of Empire and Otherness on the musical stage, and concludes with a consideration of the Great War and the interwar period, as musical theatre performed a nostalgia for a particular kind of ‘Britishness’, reflecting the anxieties of a nation in decline.