Lydia Murdoch - Daily Life of Victorian Women

DAILY LIFE OF

VICTORIAN
WOMEN

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DAILY LIFE OF

VICTORIAN
WOMEN

LYDIA MURDOCH

The Greenwood Press Daily Life Through History Series

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Murdoch, Lydia, 1970

Daily life of Victorian women / Lydia Murdoch.

pages cm. (The Greenwood Press daily life through history series)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-313-38498-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-313-38499-8 (ebook)

1. WomenGreat BritainHistory19th century. 2. WomenGreat BritainSocial conditions. 3. Womens rightsGreat Britain. 4. Great BritainSocial conditions19th century. 5. Sex roleGreat BritainHistory19th century. I. Title.

HQ1596.M87 2013

305.40941dc23 2013020956

ISBN: 978-0-313-38498-1
EISBN: 978-0-313-38499-8

18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5

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For M. Jeanne Peterson

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to my Vassar colleagues, especially to those in History, Urban Studies, Victorian Studies, and Womens Studies. Vassar librarians Deb Bucher and Carol Lynn Marshall answered my many questions, and Barbara Durniak and the interlibrary loan staff found obscure materials. Lee Bernstein, Lisa Brawley, Mita Choudhury, Lisa Collins, Beth Darlington, Rebecca Edwards, Andy Fiss, Laura Kasson Fiss, Kit French, Susan Hiner, Seth Koven, Ellen Ross, Mary Shanley, Anthony Wohl, and Susan Zlotnick offered support and shared their expertise with me. Along with the works of other scholars listed in the Further Reading, the books by Sally Mitchell, Ellen Ross, and Susie Steinbach provided invaluable models for how to write a history of Victorian womens daily life. The VICTORIA Listserv, run by Patrick Leary, has also been a vital resource. I am also thankful to my editors: Bridget Austiguy-Preschel, Denver Compton, Nina Gomez, Sharmila Krishnamurthy, and T. Malarvizhi. My greatest thanks go to my student research assistants Alexandra Zeman, Laura McCoy, and Andrea Selby, and to Andy Evans and Carol Engelhardt Herringer, who generously provided insightful suggestions on the entire manuscript.

This book is dedicated with gratitude to M. Jeanne Peterson, professor emeritus of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University, whose own research and teaching have done so much to advance the field of Victorian womens social history.

CHRONOLOGY