Women Artists’ Diaries

Chapter 4 considers the diaries of Mary Watts and Evelyn De Morgan in conjunction and in relation to their emerging political positions. It includes an analysis of the author’s transcriptions of Mary’s diaries and of Evelyn’s diary, bringing to light previously unseen archival material in order to assist the recovery and revival of women’s marginalised life writing. A reading of Mary’s multiple, detailed diaries informs a reading of Evelyn’s relatively short, single diary, and the significance of the latter is highlighted through comparison with the former. The author aims to show how these women artists’ narratives, views and voices relate to each other and to other women’s diaries and life writing of the period, challenging traditional assumptions about these women as well as ideological assumptions about Victorian women writers.

CRITICAL NAMES MATTER: “CURRER BELL,” “GEORGE ELIOT,” AND “MRS. GASKELL”

It is a well-known fact that many Victorian women writers such as the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Gaskell adopted pseudonyms or anonymity in publishing their literary works, but few people are aware of how such naming practices had been received by contemporary readers, especially by Victorian periodical reviewers – the very first readers and mediators that presented any major literary works to the public. Since we, as modern day scholars, have become so intimate with their present forms of author names appearing on course syllabuses, school curriculums, and academic papers, we hardly ask how such naming has become possible.