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Rethinking Inadequacy: Constance Maynard and Victorian Autobiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Extract

In 1881 two women who were to become part of the history of Victorian feminism met: Constance Maynard (1849–1935), graduate of one of the first cohorts of women to enter Girton College and founder in 1882 of Westfield College for Women, and Bessie Rayner Parkes Belloc (1829–1925), friend of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the “Langham Place” group of feminists, and former editor of the feminist English Women's Journal. In 1873 Maynard became the first woman in England to receive a degree in “moral sciences,” from Girton, and subsequently worked for six years as a headmistress and schoolmistress at two groundbreaking girls' schools, Cheltenham Ladies' College and the new St. Leonard's School in Scotland. When she met Belloc, she was living in London with her brother, taking art classes at the Slade School, and beginning discussions that would lead to the foundation of Westfield College, formed as an explicitly Evangelical-identified parallel to ecumenical Girton and also as the first college to prepare women for the examinations and degrees offered by the University of London.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

Works Cited

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Marcus, Laura. Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice. New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Palmer, Sarah. “Catalogue of the Archives of Constance Maynard (1849–1935).” Queen Mary University of London Library Services, 2010.Google Scholar
Phipps, Pauline. Constance Maynard's Passions: Religion, Sexuality, and an English Educational Pioneer, 1849–1935. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Richardson, Elsa. “New Queer Histories: Laura Doan's Disturbing Practices and the Constance Maynard Archive.” Women's History Review 25, no. 1 (2016): 161–68.Google Scholar
Saunders, Max. Self Impression: Life Writing, Autobiografiction, and the Forms of Modern Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Sondheimer, Janet. Castle Adamant in Hampstead: A History of Westfield College, 1882–1982. London: Westfield College, University of London, 1983.Google Scholar
Vicinus, Martha. Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Walker, Pamela. “Adoption and Victorian Culture.” History of the Family 11 (2006): 211221.Google Scholar
Maynard, Constance. Autobiography. Special Collections. Queen Mary, University of London Archives, www.library.qmul.ac.uk/archives/digitised-records/constance-maynard/autobiography. Also included in The Diaries of Constance Maynard, Founding Principal of Westfield College, University of London, 72 vols. (14 reels). Brighton, England: Harvester Microform, 1987.Google Scholar
Maynard, Constance. “Diary Regarding Effie [Stephanë Anthon],” 10 October 1888–18 November 1888. In The Diaries of Constance Maynard, Founding Principal of Westfield College, University of London, 72 vols. (14 reels). Brighton, England: Harvester Microform, 1987.Google Scholar
Maynard, Constance. Green-books, 1866–1935. Special Collections. Queen Mary, University of London Archives, www.library.qmul.ac.uk/archives/digitised-records/constance-maynard/diary. Also available in The Diaries of Constance Maynard, Founding Principal of Westfield College, University of London, 72 vols. (14 reels). Brighton, England: Harvester Microform, 1987.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. S/Z, trans. Miller, Richard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.Google Scholar
Bebbington, David. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989.Google Scholar
Booth, Marilyn, and Burton, Antoinette. “Editors’ Note.Journal of Women's History 21, no. 4 (2009): 812.Google Scholar
Corbett, Mary Jean. Representing Femininity: Middle-Class Subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian Women's Diaries. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992Google Scholar
Firth, C. B. Constance Louisa Maynard, Mistress of Westfield College: A Family Portrait. London: Allen and Unwin, 1949Google Scholar
Galbraith, Gretchen. “‘Corresponding with Men’: Exploring the Significance of Constance Maynard's Magazine Writing, 1913–1920.” In Women in Magazines: Research, Representation, Production, and Consumption, ed. Ritchie, Rachel et al. New York: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. EBSCOhost e-books.Google Scholar
Hewitt, Martin. “Diary, Autobiography, and the Practice of Life History.” In Life Writing and Victorian Culture, edited by Amigoni, David, 2140. Burlington: Ashgate, 2006.Google Scholar
Jay, Elisabeth. “Constance Maynard's Life-Writing Considered as Spiritual Autobiography.” Women's History Review 25, no. 1 (2016): 7488.Google Scholar
Lacey, Candida, ed. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group. 1987. London: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Naomi. “Evangelicalism and the Making of Same-Sex Desire: The Life and Writings of Constance Maynard (1849–1935).Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 2011.Google Scholar
Love, Heather. Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Mackelworth, Jane, Eyre, Angharad, and Richardson, Elsa. “Inspired by Constance Maynard: Exploring Women's Sexual, Emotional, and Religious Lives through Their Writings.” Women's History Review 25, no. 1 (2016): 116.Google Scholar
Marcus, Laura. Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice. New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Palmer, Sarah. “Catalogue of the Archives of Constance Maynard (1849–1935).” Queen Mary University of London Library Services, 2010.Google Scholar
Phipps, Pauline. Constance Maynard's Passions: Religion, Sexuality, and an English Educational Pioneer, 1849–1935. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Richardson, Elsa. “New Queer Histories: Laura Doan's Disturbing Practices and the Constance Maynard Archive.” Women's History Review 25, no. 1 (2016): 161–68.Google Scholar
Saunders, Max. Self Impression: Life Writing, Autobiografiction, and the Forms of Modern Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Sondheimer, Janet. Castle Adamant in Hampstead: A History of Westfield College, 1882–1982. London: Westfield College, University of London, 1983.Google Scholar
Vicinus, Martha. Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Walker, Pamela. “Adoption and Victorian Culture.” History of the Family 11 (2006): 211221.Google Scholar