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Ghost stories have always provided a popular source of entertainment, thrilling readers with tales of remote gothic castles and dark dungeons. In the nineteenth century, authors made the genre even scarier by bringing the uncanny within the sanctity of the middle-class home. Women writers especially saw the ghost story as an empowering form, using it to make subversive arguments about gender, class, sexuality, race, and money. In this electrifying collection, Melissa Edmundson showcases ten authors who led lives that challenged Victorian notions of how women should behave and brought those transgressive ideas into their fiction.This collection includes:THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS Amelia B. EdwardsSINCE I DIED Elizabeth Stuart PhelpsTHE SHADOW IN THE CORNER Mary Elizabeth BraddonTHE GHOST AT THE RATH Rosa MulhollandFROM THE DEAD Edith NesbitIN THE SÉANCE ROOM Lettice GalbraithTHE HOUSE WHICH WAS RENT FREE G. M. RobinsTHE LOST GHOST Mary E. WilkinsTHE STRIDING PLACE Gertrude AthertonTHE PRAYER Violet Hunt

Elizabeth Siddall is best known as the muse and model for many Pre-Raphaelite artists and as the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. However, she was also an artist and a poet. This book publishes all her extant poetry in a single volume for the first time. Serena Trowbridge has undertaken extensive archival research to restore Siddall's better-known poems - often heavily edited in previous publications - to their original form, and to identify and reproduce poems and fragments not previously included in anthologies. Elizabeth Siddall's own voice emerges fully from these pages, supporting her rediscovery as a creative artist in her own right.Each poem is accompanied by notes and analysis, and the detailed introduction, extensive bibliography, and biographical timeline position Siddall in her historical, literary and critical contexts. Appendices include a previously unpublished letter from Siddall and poems by other writers that relate to her life and work. The book is illustrated with portraits of Siddall and examples of her own art.Dr. Serena Trowbridge is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University. Her monograph, Christina Rossetti's Gothic (Bloomsbury), was published in 2013, and other publications include 'Past, present, and future death in the graveyard' in Gothic and Death, ed. Carol Davison (Manchester University Press, 2017), '"Truth to Nature": The Pleasures and Dangers of the Environment in Christina Rossetti's Poetry' in Victorians and the Environment, ed. Lawrence Mazzeno (Ashgate, 2017), Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum (edited with Thomas Knowles), (Pickering & Chatto, 2014) and Pre-Raphaelite Masculinities (edited with Amelia Yeates), (Ashgate, 2014). Serena was editor of the Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society 2005-2017.

The spirited memoir of Harvey Teasdale (1817-1904) tells the story of a wilful child who became a stage-struck youth before achieving success with his celebrated acrobatic performances in a monkey costume in the theatres of Yorkshire. Imprisoned for assaulting his wife, he experienced a religious conversion and travelled around Yorkshire as an itinerant preacher, using his actor's skills to promote Methodism as vigorously as he once promoted himself. Teasdale's highly expressive and dramatic autobiography is a rare example of the voice of a working-class Victorian performer; it also gives fascinating glimpses of life in nineteenth-century Sheffield and its schools, factories, theatres and public houses.This edition includes: critical introduction, explanatory notes and background material.

First published in 1888, Robert Elsmere was probably the biggest-selling novel of the nineteenth century. Inspired by the religious crises of her father, Mary Augusta Ward tells the story of an Oxford clergyman who begins to doubt the doctrines of the Anglican church after he encounters the work of German rationalists. Rather than becoming an atheist, Elsmere pursues the idea of "constructive liberalism," stressing the importance of social work among the poor and uneducated. The Times called it "a clever attack upon revealed religion", while William Gladstone's copy was annotated with objections to Ward's heterodoxy. In the Victorian age, nothing was more likely to generate publicity than religious controversy, and Robert Elsmere became a runaway success. More than one million copies were sold, generating around £4,000 in royalties, which would today put Ward in the millionaire author bracket. Her earnings would have been higher if it weren't for the absence of international copyright laws when Robert Elsmere was first published. Many cheap US editions were hurriedly produced to cash in on its success. Some were sold as loss leaders for just 4 cents, and other copies were given away free with every cake of Maine's Balsam Fir Soap, conveying the idea that cleanliness was next to godliness. Out of print for twenty-five years, this new edition brings Ward's publishing phenomenon to a new audience. The text is completely reset, and the edition includes: critical introduction by Miriam Elizabeth Burstein explanatory notes extracts from the preface to the Westmoreland edition of Robert Elsmere excerpts from Gladstone's famous review of Robert Elsmere extracts from Ward's The History of David Grieve extract from Ward's The Case of Richard Meynell

Reminiscent of the Brontës' Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Millicent Garrett Fawcett's Janet Doncaster chronicles a young woman's struggle for independence. With no fortune, no family to support her, and no practical skills enabling her to earn a living, Janet is lured into an unwanted marriage and must confront an uncertain future.Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929), known today for her leadership of the British constitutional suffrage movement, distinguished herself initially as an author of works on political economy and women's rights. Her only novel, first published in 1875, explores the politics of marriage and domesticity at a time when middle-class women were actively challenging the sexual double standard in the realms of law, education, work, and family. Janet Doncaster anticipates the concerns of the New Woman novel, combining Fawcett's astute political insight with a compelling tale of fidelity, betrayal, and self-determination.This new edition includes a critical introduction by Lise Shapiro Sanders, explanatory notes, and extensive additional contextual material, including selected writings by Millicent Garrett Fawcett and other early feminist activists; contemporaneous accounts of efforts to reform the laws affecting marriage, divorce, and women's property; Victorian writings on liberalism, political economy, and temperance; and reviews of the novel from the period.

Written when the New Woman novel was at the height of its popularity, Helbeck of Bannisdale depicts the tension between a heroine's desire for independence and her love for a man who prefers wifely submission. After her father's death, Laura Fountain struggles with the legacy of his agnosticism and her growing affection for Catholic ascetic Alan Helbeck. She must decide whether love can triumph over religious scruples. Mary Ward's powerful novel captures the drama and conflict of the late nineteenth-century debates surrounding faith, doubt, and a woman's place in society.This scholarly edition, edited by Beth Sutton-Ramspeck, includes: Critical introduction Author biography Select bibliography Ward's introduction to the Westmoreland Edition Dr James Begg's 'The Blight of Popery' Extract from Thomas Henry Huxley's 'Agnosticism and Christianity' Extract from Alys Whithall Pearsall Smith's 'A Reply from the Daughters' Glossary of regional terms, words and phrases used in the text

Following the tragic death of his parents, the Earl of Cairnforth inherits his title at just a few hours old. Orphaned, disabled, and facing a life of pain and loneliness, those around him think it might be better if he doesn't survive. They have reckoned without the indomitable spirit that enables the Earl to transform his estate and touch the lives of everyone he meets. But the hardest challenge of all proves to be betrayal by the woman he has loved since childhood. Can the Earl find a way to build a family, in spite of what he has lost?In this poignant novel, Dinah Mulock Craik places a disabled hero at the centre of her narrative, offering a radical perspective on nineteenth-century attitudes to disability, family, and what it means to live a worthwhile life.

Aristocratic Jessamine Halliday, suffering a "splenetic seizure" brought on by high breeding, is prescribed a therapeutic break in the Scottish Highlands. While there, she falls in love with handsome crofter Colin Macgillvray and makes an indecent proposal by offering him the "unconditional surrender" of her body but refusing to give her hand in marriage. A Superfluous Woman is an audacious exploration of the fin-de-siècle preoccupation with race, class, and the sexual double standard.Unsurprisingly, Brooke's novel caused outrage among critics. Campaigner W. T. Stead denounced it as "an immoral tale," and The Times lamented its distinctly feminist message. This reaction, and Brooke's boldness, ensured that it became one of the best-selling New Woman novels of the 1890s.

First serialised between 1866 and 1867 by the Newsagents' Publishing Company and Edwin J. Brett, 'The Skeleton Crew, or, Wildfire Ned' was among the finest and most popular of the fierce 'penny dreadful' tales which flourished in the mid nineteenth century. Edward Warbeck, the eponymous Ned, pursues a quest to defeat murderous bandits known as the Skeleton Crew, led by the indefatigable Death-wing.Occultist A. E. Waite described this bloodthirsty tale as "suggestive of a film produced by the inmates of Bedlam" with a storyline "in a state of nightmare". The original vivid, and often terrifying, images of the skeleton outlaws are reproduced in this edition.

Shipwrecked as a young girl, middle-class Lilly Dawson is kidnapped by smugglers and forced to work as their servant. Terrified by the prospect of a forced marriage, this Victorian Cinderella flees captivity and has to navigate an outside world she finds both oppressive and dangerous. The Story of Lilly Dawson is a romping tale of pirates, outlaws, murder, mistaken identity, lust and betrayal.Best known for The Night Side of Nature, Crowe was one of the most successful women novelists of the mid-nineteenth century. Through her memorable heroine, Crowe insists that woman can "play a noble part in the world's history, if man would . . . not treat her like a full-grown baby to be flattered and spoilt on the one hand, and coerced and restricted on the other, vibrating between royal rule and slavish serfdom".As Ruth Heholt argues in her introduction, The Story of Lilly Dawson places Crowe in the vanguard of the emerging sensation genre and shows her to be a visionary and radical thinker and writer.

In a career spanning over 50 years, Morley Roberts wrote hundreds of short stories and was one of the most successful operators in the Victorian-Edwardian literary marketplace. His remarkable imagination and willingness to experiment resulted in tales of sailors on the high seas, adventurers in the Australian bush, cowboys in the wild west, saloon society in frontier towns, tramps on the railroad, miners in the mountains of British Columbia, farmers on the South African veld, and writers in men's clubs. Whatever the setting, Roberts evokes the dangers and challenges his characters face.With an eye for detail and an unerring skill in capturing the vernacular of the desperate characters he portrays, Roberts leads the reader into vividly-drawn masculine worlds.In this edition, Markus Neacey acknowledges Roberts's special contribution to the British short story by selecting the best examples from his extensive work.

Albert Smith is one of the most famous Victorians of whom you've probably never heard. During his lifetime, he was a household name, thrilling audiences with his Ascent of Mont Blanc show at London's Egyptian Hall. An inveterate showman, Smith was also a doctor, journalist, raconteur, novelist, travel writer, and playwright. His many talents were outstripped only by his boundless self-belief and huge personality. Even Queen Victoria described him in her journal as "inimitable", an epithet Smith's contemporary Charles Dickens liked to reserve for himself.Although Smith died aged only 43, he managed to pack much incident into his short life. He was robbed by highwaymen in Italy, narrowly escaped death in a hot air ballooning accident, and dodged arrest in Paris during the June Days Uprising of 1848. He also got caught up in the row over Dickens's affair with Ellen Ternan.While his bumptiousness made Smith a divisive figure, many saw in him the Victorian ideal of the self-made man: energetic, imaginative, and ready to seize any new opportunity. As Alan McNee explains in this lively biography, it was his intrepid ascent of Mont Blanc in 1851 that propelled Smith to stardom. His subsequent show inspired 'Mont Blanc mania', encouraging participation in mountaineering as a popular pursuit.The Cockney Who Sold the Alps is a story of ambition, spectacle, and the fleeting nature of celebrity.

First published in 1907 The Convert was based on Elizabeth Robins' hugely successful play, Votes for Women! which advocated militancy as the only means of achieving female suffrage. The story centres on Vida Levering, a society beauty who turns personal tragedy into political triumph by throwing her considerable intellect and energy behind the campaign. She also uses a guilty secret to gain the support of her ex-lover, the rising Tory politician Geoffrey Stonor. In this powerful novel, Robins shows the militants as noble women who care passionately about their cause, challenging the popular myth of bitter troublemakers. Many of the scenes are taken directly from actual suffrage meetings, including verbatim quotes from the hostile men who turned out to heckle them and rousing speeches by the suffragettes who stood up for their principles, at great personal risk. The Convert blends history, fiction and propaganda to intoxicating effect and is both funny and poignant. The compelling characters leap off the page and it's impossible not to be roused by their spirit and integrity. This new edition includes: * Introduction * Biography of Elizabeth Robins * Chronology of events in the suffrage campaign * Explanatory footnotes * Extensive bibliography * Contemporary reviews of The Convert and Votes for Women!

St John Aylott's life is in turmoil. With his social status already under threat, even his virtuous wife Isola is questioning his authority. Influenced by her tomboyish cousin, journalist Jane Osborn, who provides female solidarity and strong opinions, Isola fights to assert her subjectivity over a tyrannical husband; meanwhile Jane is forced to adjust to the masculine world of work on a daily newspaper.Sowing the Wind was Eliza Lynn Linton's first critically successful novel. Written during the breakdown of her marriage, it is openly, and often painfully, autobiographical. With its themes of inheritance, concealed identity, madness, and domestic violence, Linton's novel epitomises the sensation genre.The Athenaeum reviewer concluded: "The primary idea of the book is ingenious, and it is consistently kept in view throughout the narrative. We recommend readers in search of an uncommon novel to send for Sowing the Wind." The Saturday Review was terrified by the "dark hints of what would happen if women, instead of men, had the making of the laws".This edition includes a critical introduction, explanatory footnotes, bibliography, and additional contextual material.

In this beautifully written study, Carolyn Lambert explores the ways in which Elizabeth Gaskell challenges the nineteenth-century cultural construct of the home as a domestic sanctuary offering protection from the external world. Gaskell's fictional homes often fail to provide a place of safety: doors and windows are ambiguous openings through which death can enter, and are potent signifiers of entrapment as well as protective barriers. The underlying fragility of Gaskell's concept of home is illustrated by her narratives of homelessness, a state she uses to represent psychological, social, and emotional separation.By drawing on novels, letters and non-fiction writings, Lambert shows how Gaskell's detailed descriptions of domestic interiors allow for nuanced and unconventional interpretations of character and behaviour, and evince a complex understanding of the significance of home for the construction of identity, gender and sexuality. Lambert's Gaskell is an outsider whose own dilemmas and conflicts are reflected in the intricate and multi-faceted portrayals of home in her fiction.

"The most thoroughly sensual tale I have read in English for a long time," complained Geraldine Jewsbury in her reader's report on Rhoda Broughton's Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867). Initially serialised in The Dublin University Magazine, the novel had been brought to the attention of the publisher Bentley and Son by its editor, J S Le Fanu, who also happened to be Broughton's uncle. Although Jewsbury convinced Bentley that this novel was unsuitable for "decent people", she succeeded only in delaying its publication, as Broughton instead struck a deal with their rival, Tinsley Brothers. While Broughton ultimately triumphed, she was obliged to make extensive revisions, promising to "expunge it of coarseness and slanginess, & to rewrite those passages which cannot be toned down".Jewsbury's moral squeamishness was not shared by the reading public, who were thrilled by Broughton's vivid depiction of Kate Chester teetering on the brink of an adulterous liaison with the solipsistic and haughty Dare Stamer. Notwithstanding the extensive editorial changes, Broughton's novel remains a pioneering portrayal of female sexuality, or what Jewsbury called "highly coloured & hot blooded passion".Reproducing the text of its first appearance in volume form, this new edition of Not Wisely, but Too Well illuminates the novel's ideological and aesthetic complexity through appendices related to its publication history, revision, and reception. These appendices include a section containing Jewsbury's reader's report and Broughton and Le Fanu's correspondence with the Bentleys, a list of variants between serial and volume formats of the novel, and a selection of contemporary reviews. Together these materials provide a fascinating case study of the coming to print, and reception, of a controversial Victorian text, while also attesting to the challenges Broughton faced in representing female desire in her early fiction.This completely reset critical edition includes:* Introduction by Tamar Heller* Explanatory footnotes* Rhoda Broughton chronology* Select bibliography* Correspondence from the Bentley Archives relating to Not Wisely, but Too Well * Textual variants between the serialised and three-decker versions, including the original ending* Selection of contemporary reviews and responses.

First published in 1892, Grania is the story of a fisherman's daughter from the Islands of Aran, off the coast of Galway. Grania O'Malley's life is circumscribed by family duty and her destiny as wife to her feckless fiancé, Murdough Blake. When she realises her wants her only for her money and property, Grania rejects him in favour of heroism, although with tragic consequences.Through complex and skilled characterisation, Lawless evokes a vivid picture of island life, with its unforgiving landscape and grinding poverty. Using a unique poetic style, the author conveys both humour and a sense of Gaelic identity, inextricably linked with this remarkable community.Algernon Swinburne described Grania as "one of the most exquisite and perfect works in the language" and Mrs Humphry Ward praised its "breath of sensitive humanity". This scholarly edition, the first for twenty-five years, brings Emily Lawless's extraordinary novel to a new audience.

First published anonymously in 1892, Weeds marked a significant departure from the humour that made Jerome K. Jerome famous. This disturbing story of sexual corruption shows marital fidelity as a perpetual struggle, with Dick Selwyn falling for the attractions of his wife's young cousin, Jessie. The link between mental and physical corruption is sustained through a central metaphor of a weed-infested garden, which perishes through neglect.With its radical ending, this story of the dark side of passion casts an important light on late-nineteenth-century sexual politics and gender ideology. Jerome engages with contemporary debates on degeneration and the emergence of the New Woman, offering a powerful evocation of fin-de-siècle society.Jerome's publisher Arrowsmith was nervous about the book's frank portrayal of adultery and it was never available for general sale during his lifetime. This new edition, with a critical introduction, bibliography and explanatory footnotes by Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton, reconsiders Jerome K. Jerome's important and neglected work.

The First Adman reveals the untold story of how modern advertising was pioneered 200 years ago by the entrepreneur, self-publicist and dodgy Member of Parliament, Thomas Bish. Royalty and politicians courted this early media star and society figure, who was one of the best-known men in the land and allegedly more famous than the prime minister himself.Drawing on previously inaccessible contemporary sources, Gary Hicks resurrects the Bish brand, as famous in its day as Coca-Cola is today, and explains how it started a publicity revolution. This is an entertaining and rollicking tale of an eccentric marketing genius whose extraordinary legacy survives in modern mass media.

Dame Clara Butt (1872-1936) was one of the most celebrated singers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, a symbol of the glory of a Britain on whose Empire the sun never set. Standing an Amazonian 6'2" tall, Clara had a glorious contralto voice of such power that when she sang in Dover, Sir Thomas Beecham swore she could be heard in Calais. A friend of the royal family, Clara was made a Dame in recognition of her sterling work during the First World War. Her rousing performances of Land of Hope and Glory brought the nation together and raised thousands of pounds for charity.In the first biography since her death, Maurice Leonard tells Dame Clara Butt's remarkable story, from humble beginnings in Sussex, to her dazzling apotheosis by an adoring nation. With humour and insight, Leonard reveals the woman behind the cultural icon.

First published in 1897, The Beth Book - Being a Study from the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius, is a semi-autobiographical novel offering a portrait of the artist as a young woman. Grand's compelling story recounts in vivid detail the childhood of her young heroine, Beth, a spirited and intelligent girl who challenges the limitations of provincial life in Ireland and Yorkshire. Without the benefit of an education, Beth must make her own way through adolescence, contending with a violent mother and an alcoholic father. With little money to go round, Beth often goes without so that her brothers might be raised as gentlemen, thus giving her an early introduction to sexual inequality. Even in girlhood Beth challenges gender expectations, dressing as a boy and poaching rabbits for the family dinner table.Like Grand herself, Beth makes an early marriage to escape her unhappy childhood, becoming the wife of philandering doctor, Daniel Maclure. Disillusion soons turns to defiance, as Beth recreates herself as a woman of genius, with her rousing refrain of "I shall succeed!" After escaping to a room of her own, Beth becomes a New Woman, setting a high standard both for herself and for other women.Grand's extraordinary recall of childhood emotions, avoiding Victorian sentimentality, makes The Beth Book a convincing and captivating chronicle of female adolescence. The coming of age and sexual awakening of Beth broadens into a consideration of wider social issues, such as marital violence, vivisection, and the sexual double standard. The Beth Book deserves to become a classic of the Victorian age.This new edition, the first for almost twenty years, includes:* A critical introduction by Jenny Bourne Taylor* Explanatory footnotes* Bibliography* Contemporary reviews* A selection of other writings by and about Sarah Grand

Spanning the years 1870-1881, Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance documents the everyday, yet astonishing, experiences of spirit activity within the domestic space of the Victorian parlour. Through the intimacy of her diary-like prose, Houghton conjures cosy images of spirits laying the table for tea in what she called the "interblending of the heavenly and the mundane". She is equally comfortable communicating with her beloved pet dove as she is with the archangel Gabriel, living an unassuming yet spiritually rich life, filled with people of this world and the next.Houghton narrates her experiences of séances and trance mediumship with close friends, discusses her own automatic spirit drawings, and offers an autobiographical glimpse into her day-to-day business.This critical edition, edited by Sara Williams, includes:* Introduction* Author biography* Select bibliography* Explanatory footnotes* Appendices on 'Houghton in the Spiritualist press', 'Automatic spirit drawings' and 'Houghton's spirit photography'

Critical edition of Eliza Lynn Linton's semi-autobiographical novel in which she adopts a male persona in order to recount her relationships with other women. The edition includes an introduction, explanatory footnotes and extracts from other relevant works.

A Mummer's Wife tells the story of Kate Ede, a bored Midlands housewife unhappily married to an asthmatic draper. When a handsome travelling actor comes to lodge with her family, she succumbs to temptation, with disastrous consequences. This scholarly edition includes a critical introduction, author biography, explanatory footnotes, and a wealth of contextual material.