Poetry of the New Woman

The New Woman sought vast improvements in Victorian culture that would enlarge educational, professional, and domestic opportunities.  Although New Women resist ready classification or appraisal as a monolithic body, they tended to share many of the same beliefs and objectives aimed at improving female conditions.  While novels about the iconoclastic New Woman have garnered much interest in recent decades, poetry from the cultural and literary figure has received considerably less attention. Yet the very issues that propelled New Woman fiction are integral to the poetry of the fin de siècle. This book – the first in-depth account on the subject – enriches our knowledge of exceptionally gifted writers, including Mathilde Blind, M. E. Coleridge, Olive Custance, and Edith Nesbit. It focuses on their long-neglected British verse, analyzing its treatment of crucial matters on both the personal and public level to provide the attention the poetry so richly deserves.
Patricia Murphy is Professor Emerita in English at Missouri Southern State University, USA.