England in the nineteenth century became a predominantly middle-class society, with new opportunities for men, but new social and economic restrictions on "respectable" women. This book describes the emergence of exceptional women from their assigned domestic sphere to positions of public leadership, and finally to the cause of women's rights. Evangelical women in John Wesley's time preached publicly, but after his death were banished from the pulpits of mainstream Methodism. Other women, particularly Quakers, were soon heard in the anti-slavery movements and other reform causes of the 1820s, 30s, and 40s. In the middle of the century opposition to women entering public life was at its greatest. But some pathfinding women emboldened others by their leadership in the reforming missions and the revival campaigns of the 1850s, 60s, and 70s, especially within the temperance movement. By the last quarter of the century talented women were learning "unwomanly" skills of political leadership, particularly mastery of the public platform. In a succession of national women's organizations they applied the lessons learnt to women's issues, preparing for the final assault on "the key to all reform", women's suffrage. At the century's end the walls that had so long excluded women from public life were beginning to crumble.

Interpretations of women in the antebellum period have long dwelt upon the notion of public versus private gender spheres. As part of the ongoing reevaluation of the prehistory of the women's movement, Carolyn Lawes challenges this paradigm and the primacy of class motivation. She studies the women of antebellum Worcester, Massachusetts, discovering that whatever their economic background, women there publicly worked to remake and improve their community in their own image. Lawes analyzes the organized social activism of the mostly middle-class, urban, white women of Worcester and finds that they were at the center of community life and leadership. Drawing on rich local history collections, Lawes weaves together information from city and state documents, court cases, medical records, church collections, newspapers, and diaries and letters to create a portrait of a group of women for whom constant personal and social change was the norm. Throughout Women and Reform in a New England Community, conventional women make seemingly unconventional choices. A wealthy Worcester matron helped spark a women-led rebellion against ministerial authority in the town's orthodox Calvinist church. Similarly, a close look at the town's sewing circles reveals that they were vehicles for political exchange as well as social gatherings that included men but intentionally restricted them to a subordinate role. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the women of Worcester had taken up explicitly political and social causes, such as an orphan asylum they founded, funded, and directed. Lawes argues that economic and personal instability rather than a desire for social control motivated women, even relatively privileged ones, into social activism. She concludes that the local activism of the women of Worcester stimulated, and was stimulated by, their interest in the first two national women's rights conventions, held in Worcester in 1850 and 1851. Far from being marginalized from the vital economic, social, and political issues of their day, the women of this antebellum New England community insisted upon being active and ongoing participants in the debates and decisions of their society and nation.

During the nineteenth century, European women of all countries and social classes experienced dramatic and enduring changes in their familial, working and political lives. However, the history of women at this time is not one of unmitigated progress - theirs was an uphill struggle, fraught with hindrances, hard work and economic downturns, and the increasing intrusion of the public into their innermost private and personal lives. Breaking away from traditional categories, Rachel G. Fuchs and Victoria E. Thompson provide a sense of the variety and complexity of women's lives across national and regional boundaries, juxtaposing the experiences of women with the perceptions of their lives. Three themes unite this study: - The tension between tradition and modernity - The changing relationship between the community and individual - The shifting boundaries between public and private Dealing with individual women's lives within a large social and cultural context, Fuchs and Thompson demonstrate how strong and courageous women refused to live within the prescribed domestic roles - and how many became the modern women of the twentieth century.

Nineteenth Century British Women's Education brings together key documents in the Victorian feminist campaign to establish and improve girls’ and women’s education. Drawing widely on articles from the feminist and established press, government papers, newspapers, professional and association journals, as well as memoirs, addresses, pamphlets and reviews, this collection gives researchers access to nineteenth-century debates on improving girls’ and women’s education and women’s work as educators. The collection is divided overall into two sections, both of which incorporate materials that argue for the improvement of girls’ and women’s education as well as arguments made against education for girls and women. In examining the campaign to establish higher education for women, the first volumes include the writings of such primary figures as Emily Davies, Lydia Becker, Barbara Bodichon, Jessie Boucherett, Josephine Butler, Frances Power Cobbe, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff in addition to illustrating the significance of institutions such as Girton and Newnham Colleges. Later volumes document women's work as educators, and include writings by Mary Carpenter, Dorothea Beale, Frances Mary Buss, and the Shirreff sisters Maria and Emily, gifted educators of girls at the elementary and secondary levels, and women whose educational practice embodied the arguments they made on behalf of girls’ education. These volumes also chart the importance of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, the Schools Inquiry Commission and the Journal of Women’s Education Union in charting the increasing organization and professionalization of women teachers. Edited and with new introductions by Susan Hamilton and Janice Schroeder, Nineteenth Century British Women's Education is destined to be an invaluable reference resource to all future scholars of feminism and the history of education.

This book presents a study of the development of the feminist movement in Britain and America during the 19th century. Acknowledging the similar social conditions in both countries during that period, the author suggests that a real sense of distinctiveness did exist between British and American feminists. American feminists were inspired by their own perception of the superiority of their social circumstances, for example, whereas British feminists found their cause complicated by traditional considerations of class. Christine Bolt aims to show that the story of the American and British women's movement is one of national distinctiveness within an international cause. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of American and British political history and women's studies.

A reprint of a book first published in 1993 by John Murray, UK. Perkins (women's history, Northwestern U.) uses letters, memoirs, and other revealing, first-hand sources to describe the social conditions of women of all classes during the Victorian era. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Women have been thoughtful readers and interpreters of scripture throughout the ages, yet the usual history of biblical interpretation includes few women’s voices. To introduce readers to this untapped source for the history of biblical interpretation, this volume presents forgotten works from the nineteenth century written by women—including Grace Aguilar, Florence Nightingale, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, among others—from various faith backgrounds, countries, and social classes engaging contemporary biblical scholarship. Due to their exclusion from the academy, women’s interpretive writings addressed primarily a nonscholarly audience and were written in a variety of genres: novels and poetry, catechisms, manuals for Bible study, and commentaries on the books of the Bible. To recover these nineteenth-century women interpreters of the Bible, each essay in this volume locates a female author in her historical, ecclesiastical, and interpretive context, focusing on particular biblical passages to clarify an author’s contributions as well as to explore how her reading of the text was shaped by her experience as a woman.

"This rich explorative book examines the intricacies of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class and how these complex influences weave their patterns in the daily lives of leaders. It achieves the difficult balance between acknowledging differences as well as unifying elements. The book also raises many questions about the context for leadership and examines the central issues of: leadership for what? What are leaders there to do - and for whom? To ensure that students achieve higher examination scores, or to promote equity and social justice? This book offers many fresh insights into these and other important questions." Professor Kathryn Riley, Institute of Education, University of London This book features chapters by leading international scholars on gender and educational leadership. Drawing on research in schools in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, the United States and Canada, it introduces new discussions about the impact of gender, race, class, institutional setting and recent ideologies on leadership discourses. The book shows how early research has over-emphasized gender stereotypes and tended to simplify and polarize the ways men and women lead.Looking at differences and similarities in how men and women take on and exercise leadership roles, the authors counter essentialist claims based on biological, psychological and sociological theories that stress gender difference. The discussions employ sophisticated understandings of gender relations and leadership discourses in today's globalized context. The book is for students and scholars studying leadership and for leaders in different educational contexts around the world.

First published in 1975, Music and the Middle Class made a trail-blazing contribution to the social history of music, bringing together sociological and historical methods that have subsequently become accepted as central to the discipline of musicology. Moreover, the major themes of the book are ones which scholars today continue to grapple with: the nature of the middle class(es) and their role in cultural definition; the concept of taste publics distinct from social status; and the establishment of the musical canon. This classic text is reissued here in Ashgate's Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain series, though of course the book ranges beyond its study of London to discuss in detail the contrasting concert life of Paris and Vienna. This edition features a substantial new preface which takes into account the significant work that has been done in this field since the book first appeared, and provides a unique opportunity to assess the impact the book has had on our thinking about the European middle class and its role in musical life.