Ambitious Heights

Writing, Friendship, Love – The Jewsbury Sisters, Felicia Hemans, and Jane Welsh Carlyle

Norma Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032263533
• eBook ISBN: 9781000653045
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

How did the Victorian woman cope with the image of herself as a writer?

What were the constraints on female friendships in a world centred on the pre-eminence of the husband?

How significant for an ambitious woman were her politics about men?

At the heart of this book, originally published in 1990, is a friendship between two women: Jane Carlyle and the novelist Geraldine Jewsbury. But it was a difficult friendship, and in its difficulty lies much that is illuminating: about nineteenth-century domestic ideology; about writing for a market, and female fame; and about the complex ambivalences between women.

Examining aspects of their lives, writing, and relationships, alongside those of two other writers – Felicia Hemans and Geraldine's sister, Maria Jane – Norma Clarke provides a subtle and illuminating discussion of the possibilities that were open to women in the Victorian age.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Contrary to Custom
• 2 The Pride of Literature
• 3 Dragoon Kinds of Women
• 4 Difficulties and Danger
• 5 Work
• 6 The Comforts of Others
• 7 Of the Female Persuasion
• 8 Telling Truths
• Appendix
• Notes
• Further Reading
• Index