Women's life writing and historical change 1780-1970
BIBLIOGRAPHY
General introductory texts
S. Smith, J. Watson, Women, autobiography, theory: a reader (1998)
S. Smith, J. Watson, Reading autobiography, a guide for interpreting life narratives (2001)
J.W. Scott, ‘The Evidence of Experience’, Critical Inquiry, 17/4 (1991), 773-797
M.M. Dowd, J.A. Eckerle, Genre and women’s life-writing in Early modern England (2007)
D. Cook, A. Cullen, (eds) Women’s life-writing, 1700-1850: gender, genre and authorship
(2012)
C. Huff, Women’s life writing and imagined communities (2005) or C. Huff, ‘Towards a
geography of women’s life writing an imagined communities, an introductory essay’ Prose
Studies, 26:1-2, 1-16
Women’s History, special issue: ‘Performing the self: women’s lives in historical perspective’
22, 2 (2013)
A. Corbin, ‘The secret of the individual’ in M. Perrot (ed) A history of private life, Vol IV: From
the fires of the revolution to the Great War (1990)
V. Walkerdine, 'Subject to Change without notice: psychology, postmodernity and the
popular' in S. Pile and N. Thrift (eds.) Mapping the Subject: geographies of cultural
transformation (1995)
F. Nussbaum, The Autobiographical Subject: gender and ideology in 18thC England (1989)
J. Siegel, ‘Problematizing the Self’ in L. Hunt et al (eds.) Beyond the Cultural Turn: new
directions in the study of society and culture (1999) [online via SOLO]
L. Stanley, The Auto/biographical I: The theory and practice of feminist auto/biography
(1992)
L. Peterson, ‘Women writers and self-writing’ in J. Shattock, (ed.) Women and Literature in
Britain (1996)
T.Cosslett, C.Lury and P.Summerfield (Eds) Women’s Autobiographical Selves (2000)
For reference:
British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries [available via OXLIP]
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [available via SOLO]
Dictionary of Irish Biography [available via OXLIP]
E. Crawford, Women’s suffrage movement: a reference guide 1866-1928 (1999/2006)
[available via SOLO]
E. Crawford, The women's suffrage movement in Britain and Ireland : a regional survey
(2006) [available via SOLO].
B. Kanner, Women in context: two hundred years of British women autobiographers, a
reference guide and reader (1997)
B. Kanner, Women in English social history, 1800-1914: a guide to research (3 vols, 19871990)
Bibliography of British and Irish History [available on Brepolis via OXLIP]
M Jolly, Encyclopedia of life-writing: autobiographical and biographical forms (2001)
A.Bourke, et al (eds.), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Women's Writing and Traditions, 2
volumes (2001).
Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) https://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/clusters/life-writing
TORCH Women’s Writing research network http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/networks (website
under development)
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Themes and debates
Women, family & intimate relationships
M. Cocks & M. Houlbrook, (eds.) Palgrave advances in the modern history of sexuality (2005)
L. Delap, B. Griffin and A. Wills, (eds) The Politics of Domestic Authority in Britain since 1800
(2009)
M. Vicinus, Intimate friends: women who loved women, 1778-1928 (2004)
J. Bailey, Parenting in England, 1760-1830: emotion, identity and generation (2012)
L. Davidoff et al, The family story: blood, contract and intimacy, 1830-1960 (1999)
L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 17801850 (1987)
S. D’Cruze (ed.), Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950: Gender and Class (1999)
E. Ross, Love and toil: motherhood in outcast London 1870-1918 (1993)
R. Cullen Owens, A Social History of Women in Ireland, 1870-1970, (Dublin, 2005).
L. Doan, Fashioning sapphism: the origins of a modern English lesbian culture (2001)
R. Rhodes, Women and the family in post-famine Ireland (1992)
L. Hall, Sex, gender and social change in Britain since 1880 (2000)
J. Lewis, (Ed) Labour and love; women’s experience of home and family 1850-1940 (1986)
S. Marcus, Between women: friendship, desire and marriage in Victorian England (2007)
A. Oram, Her husband was a woman! Women’s gender-crossing and twentieth century
British popular culture (2007)
E. Roberts, Women and Families: an Oral History 1940–70 (1995)
M. Collins, Modern Love: An Intimate History of Men and Women in Twentieth Century
Britain (2003)
J. Giles, The Parlour and the Suburb: Domestic Identities, Class, Femininity and
Modernity (2004)
A. Light, Forever England: femininity, literature and conservatism between the wars (1991)
C. Langhamer, ‘The Meanings of Home in Postwar Britain’, Journal of Contemporary History
40 (2005)
A. Davis, Modern motherhood: women and family in England, c.1945-2000 (2012)
Life courses: from childhood to maturity
M.J. Maynes, ‘Age as a category of historical analysis: history, agency and narratives of
childhood’ Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 1 (2008), 114-24
Women’s History Review: Special issue – ‘Gender and generations: women and life-cycles’
20/2 (2011)
K. Davies, ‘Capturing women’s lives: a discussion of time and methodological issues,
Women’s Studies International Forum, 19/6 (1996)
T. Haereven & K. Masaoka, ‘Turning points and transitions: perceptions of the life course,
Journal of Family History, 13 (1988)
P. Jalland, Women from birth to death. The female life-cycle in Britain, 1830-1914 (1986)
H.L. Smith, ‘Age: a problematic concept for women’ Journal of Women’s History 12/4 (2001)
K. Barclay, ‘Intimacy and the life cycle in the marital relationships of the Scottish Elite during
the long 18thC’ Women’s History Review, 20/2 (2011)
B. Glaser, ‘Gendered childhoods: on the discursive formation of young females in the 18thC’,
in A. Muller (ed) Fashioning childhood in the 18thC: age and identity (2006)
J. Humphries, Childhood and child labour in the British industrial revolution (2010)
M.J. Maynes, B. Soland, and C. Benninghaus (eds.) Secret gardens, satanic mills: placing girls
in European history, 1750-1960 (2005)
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S. Mitchell, The New girl: girl’s culture in England, 1880-1915 (1995)
C.G. Pooley & S. Pooley ‘Constructing a suburban identity: youth, femininity and modernity
in late-Victorian Merseyside’, Journal of Historical Geography, 36. 4 (2010)
S.Alexander, 'Becoming a Woman in London in the 1920s and '30s' in idem. Becoming a
Woman (London 1994)
S. Spencer, ‘Be yourself: Girl and the business of growing up in late 1950s England’ in K.
Cowman & L. Jackson (eds.) Women and work culture: Britain 1850-1950 (2005)
P. Tinkler, ‘Girlhood and growing up’ I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska (ed) Women in 20thC Britain
(Harlow, 2001)
S. Todd, ‘Young Women, Work, and Leisure in Interwar England’, Historical Journal, 48
(2005)
P. Tinkler, ‘Cause for concern: Young Women and Leisure, 1930-50’, Women’s
History Review, 12 (2) 2003
D. Looser, Women writers and old age in Great Britain, 1750-1850 (2008)
P. Thane, & L. Botelho (eds.) Women and ageing in British society since 1500 (2001)
P. Thane, Old age in English history: past experiences, present issues (2000)
Education, religion and cultural life
S. Morgan (ed.) Women, religion and feminism in Britain 1750-1900 (2002)
S. Morgan & J. Devries, Women, gender and religious cultures in Britain, 1800-1940 (2010)
S. Knott & B. Taylor (eds) Women, gender and enlightenment (2005)
M. Beetham, 'Women and the consumption of print' in Joanne Shattock (ed) Women and
literature in Britain 1800-1900 (CUP, 2001)
J. Cruickshank, ‘Friend of my soul: constructing spiritual friendship in the autobiography of
Mary Fletcher’ Journal for 18thC Studies, 32/3 (2009)
E. Eger (ed) Women, writing and the public sphere, 1700-1830 (2001)
A. Vickery, The gentleman’s daughter: women’s lives in Georgian England (1998)
C. de Bellaigue, Educating women: schooling and identity in England and France, 1800-1867
(2007)
M. Gomersall, Working class girls in 19thC England: life, work and schooling (1997)
K.J. Mays, ‘Domestic spaces, readerly acts: reading, gender, and class in working-class
autobiography’ Nineteenth Century Contexts (2008)
J. Bellamy, A. Laurence, G. Perry, (eds), Women, scholarship and criticism: gender and
knowledge, c.1790-1900 (2000)
C. Dyhouse, No distinction of sex?: women in British universities, 1870-1939 (1995)
D. Gorham, ‘The ideology of femininity and reading for girls, 1850-1914’, in F. Hunt
(ed.), Lessons for life, the schooling of girls and women, 1850-1950 (1987)
S. S Holton, Quaker women: personal life, memory and radicalism in the lives of women
Friends, 1780-1930 (2007)
S. Pooley & C. Pooley, ‘Such a splendid tale: the late 19thC world of a young female reader’
Cultural and social history, 2 (2005)
P. Tinkler, Constructing girlhood: popular magazines for girls growing up in England 19201950 (1995)
M. Allen, S-S Holton & A. MacKinnon (eds.) Special Issue: ’Between rationality and
revelation: women, faith and public roles in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ’ Women’s History
Review, 7/2 (1998)
S. Williams, ‘Urban popular religion and rites of passage’ in H. McLeod (ed.), European
Religion in the Age of Great Cities 1830-1930 (1995)
G. Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (1994)
D. Rafferty and S. Parkes, Female education in Ireland, 1700-1900, (2007).
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O. Walsh, Anglican Women in Dublin: philanthropy and education in the early twentieth
century, (2005)
Economic constraints and agency, employment and professional identity
A. Erickson, ‘Married Women’s Occupation in Eighteenth-Century London’, Continuity and
Change 23 (2008), pp. 267-307
M. Finn, “Women, consumption and coverture in England, 1760-1860”, Historical Journal, 3
(1996)
N. Goose (ed.), Women’s Work in Industrial England: Regional and Local Perspectives (2007)
E. Higgs, “Women, occupation and work in the 19th-century census”, History Workshop
Journal, 23 (1987)
L. Hollen Lees, The solidarities of strangers: the English poor laws and the people
G. Holloway, Women and work in Britain since 1840 (2005)
K. Honeyman, Women, Gender and Industrialisation in England, 1700-1870 (2000)
J. Liddington, ‘Agenda, authority and mining in an industrial landscape: Anne Lister 17911840”, History Workshop Journal, 42 (1996)
L. Peterson, Becoming a woman of letters: myths of authorship and facts of the Victorian
market (2009)
R. Livesey, “The politics of work: feminism professionalisation and women inspectors the
factories and workshops”, Women’s History Review 13 (2) (2004)
S. Rose, Limited livelihoods: gender and class in 19th century England (1992)
C. Clay, British women writers, 1914-1945 Professional work and friendship (2006)
S. Todd, Young Women, Work and Family in England 1918-1950
S. Spencer, Gender, work and education in Britain in the 1950s (2005)
M Hill, Women in Ireland: a century of Change (2003)
Citizenship, feminism and war
A. Vickery (ed), Women privilege and power: British politics, 1750 to the present (2001)
E. Yeo (Ed), Radical femininity: women’s self-representation in the public sphere (1998)
J. Rendall, The origins of modern feminism: women in Britain, France and the United States,
1780-1860 (1985)
M.G Valiulis (ed.), Gender and Power in Irish History (2009).
K. Gleadle, Borderline citizens: women, gender and political culture in Britain, 181567 (2009)
C. Midgley, Feminism and empire: women activists in imperial Briton (2007)
S. Richardson, The political worlds of women: gender and politics in nineteenth-century
Britain, (Oxford, 2013)
A. Twells, ‘Missionary domesticity, global reform and “woman’s sphere” in early nineteenthcentury England’, Gender and History, 18 (2006), 266-84 or see relevant ch in her Civilising
mission and the English middle class, 1792-1850 (2009)
L. Delap, The Freewoman, periodical communities and the feminist reading public (2000)
C. Eustance, J. Ryan, L. Ugolini, A suffrage reader: charting directions in British Suffrage
History (2000)
Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward (eds.), Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens, (2007)
P. Levine, Feminist Lives in Victorian England: private lives and public commitment (1990)
L. Bland, Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality, 1885-1914 (1995)
S. Grayzel, Women identities at war: gender, motherhood and politics in Britain and France
during the First World War (1999)
N. Gullace, ‘The Blood of Our Sons’: Men, Women and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship
during the First World War (2002)
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J. Hannam & K. Hunt, Socialist women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s (2002)
M.Cullen and M. Luddy, (eds.) Female Activists: Irish Women and Change, 1900-1960, (2001)
S. Koven & S. Michel, Mothers of the new world: maternalist politics and the origin of
welfare states (1993)
S. Paseta, Irish nationalist women, 1900-1918 (2013)
Ward, Margaret (ed.), In Their own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, (Dublin: Attic Press,
2001)
A. Matthews, Renegades: Irish Republican Women, 1900-1922, (2010).
A. Matthews, Dissidents: Irish Republican Women, 1922-1941, (2012)
P. Summerfield & C.M. Peniston-Bird, Contesting home defence: men, women and the Home
Guard in the Second World War (2007)
H. Jones, Women in British public life, 1914-1950: gender, power and social policy (2000)
J. Hinton, Women, social leadership and the Second World War (2002)
Genres of life-writing
note: these suggestions are in addition to the specialised reading recommended for each
class, as specified on the term schedule
Diary
F. Nussbaum, ‘Towards conceptualizing diary’ in James Olney (ed) Studies in Autobiography
(1988)
S.L. Bunkers and C.A. Huff (eds.), Inscribing the daily: critical essays on women’s
diaries (1996)
E. Botonaki, ‘Early modern women diaries and closets: chambers of choice Mercy and
Beloved Retirement’ in D. Doll & J. Munns (eds) Recording and reordering: essays on the 17th
and 18thC diary and journal (2006)
C. Delafield, Women’s diaries as narrative in the 19thCentury novel (2009)
C. Huff, ‘Chronicles of confinement: reactions to childbirth in British women’s
diaries’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 10 (1987) 63-68
R. Rogers, ‘Schools, discipline and community: diary-writing and schoolgirl culture in late
nineteenth-century France’, Women's History Review, (1995) 4:4, 525-555
J.Hannam, “Suffragettes our splendid for any work: the Blathwayt diaries as a source for
suffrage history”, in Eustance, Ryan and Ugolini (Eds), A suffrage reader (2000)
S.Bruley, “A new perspective on women workers in the Second World War: the industrial
diary of Kathleen Church-Bliss and Elsie Whiteman”, Labour History Review 68 (2) (2003)
Liz Stanley, “Women have servants and men never eat: issues in Reading gender, using the
case study of mass observation 1937 day diaries”, Women’s History Review 4 (1) (1995)
M. Jolly, Historical entries: mass observation diarists, 1937-2001 (2001)
Letters
M. Bossis & K. McPherson , ‘Methodological journeys through correspondence’ Yale French
Studies, 71 (1986)
P.A.M. Spacks, 'Personal letters', in J. J. Richetti, (ed.), The Cambridge history of
English literature, 1660-1780 (2005)
L. Mitchell, C. Poster (eds) Letter-writing manuals and instruction from antiquity to the
present (2007)
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C. Nixon & L. Penner, ‘Materials of the ‘everyday’ woman writer: letter-writing in 18thC
England and America’ in M. Goggin (ed) Women and things, 1750-1950: gendered material
strategies (2009)
M. Jolly, L. Stanley, ‘Letters as / not a genre’ Life Writing, 2,2, (2005)
Michael Roper, ‘Splitting in Unsent Letters: Writing as a Social Practice and a Psychological
Activity’, Social History, 26 (2001)
R. Earle, (ed.). Epistolary selves: letters and letter-writers, 1600-1945 (1999) - intro
M. Cross & C. Bland (eds) Gender and politics in the age of letter-writing (2004)
S. Pearsall, Atlantic families: lives and letters in later 18thC (Oxford, 2008)
A. Hurley, ‘A conversation of their own: watering place correspondence among the
Bluestockings’, Eighteenth Century Studies 40/1 (2006)
P. Nestor, ‘New opportunities for self-reflection and self-fashioning: women, letters and the
novel in mid-Victorian England’, Literature and History, 19/2 (2010)
R A M Harris, “Come you all courageously: Irish women in America write home”, Eire-Ireland
36/1-2 (2001)
C Acton, ‘Writing and Waiting: The First World War Correspondence between Vera Brittain
and Roland Leighton’, Gender and History, xi (1999)
M.Houlbrook, “A pin to see the Peep show”: culture fiction and selfhood in Edith
Thompson’s letters, 1921-2, Past and Present 207 (1) (2010)
J.HARTLEY, 'Letters are everything these days' : mothers and letters in the Second World War,
p. 183-95 in Earle, Epistolary selves
M. Jolly, ‘Writing the web: letters from the women’s peace movement’ in The Feminist
Seventies (2003)
M. Hanna, ‘A republic of letters: the epistolary tradition in France during World War I’
American Historical Review, 108/5 (2003)
M. Lyons, ‘Love letters and writing practices: on écritures intimes in the 19thC’ Journal of
Family History, 24 (1999) 232-39.
Autobiography
L. Marcus, Autobiographical discourses: theory criticism, practice (1994)
T. Cosslett et al, Feminism and autobiography (1999)
J. D. Hall, '"To widen the reach of our love": autobiography, history, and desire', Feminist
Studies 26/1 (2000)
C. Steedman, Past tenses: essays on writing, autobiography and history (1992)
F.A. Nussbaum, ‘Eighteenth century women’s autobiographical commonplaces’, in S.
Benstock (ed.), Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings,
(London, 1988)
J. Peakman, ‘Memoirs of women of pleasures: the whore biography 1795-1825’ in Women’s
writing journal (2004)
V. Sanders, The Private Lives of Victorian Women: Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century
England (1989)
P. Brown, The captured world: the child and childhood in nineteenth-century women’s
writing in England (1993), ch 5.
M.J.Corbett, Representing femininity: middle class subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian
women’s autobiographies (1992)
L.H. Peterson, Traditions of Victorian women's autobiography : the poetics and politics of life
writing. (1999)
V. Sanders, ''Father's daughters' : three Victorian antifeminist women autobiographers' in V.
Newey, Vincent and P. Shaw, (eds.), Mortal pages, literary lives : studies in nineteenthcentury autobiography (1996)
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B. Green, Spectacular Confessions: Autobiography, Performative Activism and the Sites of
Suffrage 1905-1938 ( 1998)
C. Etherington-Wright, Gender, professions and discourse: early 20th century women’s
autobiography (2009)
L.R. Anderson, Women and autobiography in the twentieth century: remembered futures,
(2007)
T.S.Napier, “Pilgrimage to the self: autobiographies of 20th century Irish women”, in L.Hart
(Ed) Modern Irish autobiography (2007)
N.Hallett, Lesbian lives : identity and auto/biography in the twentieth century (1999)
J. Braxton, Black women writing autobiography: a tradition within a tradition (Philadelphia
1989)
Travel writing
C. Franklin (ed) Women’s Travel Writing, 1750-1850 (2005)
K. Siegel (ed) Gender, genre & identity in women’s travel writing (2004)
L. Scholl, ‘Translating culture: Harriet Martineau’s eastern travels’, in J. Kuehn, Travel writing,
form and empire (2009)
P. Laisram, Viewing the Islamic orient: British travel writers of the 19thC (2006)
S. Mills, Discourses and difference. An analysis of women’s travel writing and colonialism
(1991)
M. Simon-Martin, ‘Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon’s Travel letters: performative identityformation in epistolary narratives, Women’s History Review 22/2 (2013)
K. Walchester, Our own fair Italy: 19thC women’s travel writing and Italy 1800-1844 (2007)
E. Jacobs, ‘Eileen Power’s Asian journey, 1920-21: history, narrative and subjectivity’ ,
Women’s History Review, 7/3 (1998)
S. Smith, Moving lives: 20thC women’s travel writing (2001)
Recording/representing women’s voices: oral testimony and official sources
A. Woollacott, 'The Fragmentary Subject: Feminist History, Official Records, and SelfRepresentation', Women's Studies International Forum 21/4 (1998)
T. Bartlett, “Bearing witness: female evidences in courts martial convened to suppress the
1798 rebellion”, in D. Keogh and N. Furlong (ed), The women of 1798 (1998)
A. O’Hanlon-Dunn, ‘Women as witnesses: elementary schoolmistresses and the Cross
commission, 1885-8’. In J Goodman and S a Harrop (Eds), Women, educational policy-making
and administration in England: authoritative women since 1800 (2000)
C. Daley, ‘He would know, but I just have a feeling’: gender and oral history’, Women’s
History Review, 7/3 (1998)
K. Fisher, ‘“She was quite satisfied with the arrangements I made”: gender and birth control
in Britain, 1920-1950’, Past and present 169 (2000) 161-93 – oral history
J. Sangster ‘Telling our stories: feminist debates and the use of oral history’ Women’s History
Review, 3/1 (1994)
P. Summerfield, ‘Culture and composure: creating narratives of the gendered self in oral
history interviews’ Cultural and Social History 1/1 (2004)
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