Women writing home, 1700-1920 : female correspondence across the British Empire

Volume 1: Africa Edited by Silke Strickrodt General Introduction Bibliography Volume Introduction Note on the Text Bibliography Sabina Peter Clemens, Sierra Leone, 1851-63 Henrietta Elise Konig/Knodler, Sierra Leone, 1860-5 Lady Florence Dixie, South Africa, 1881 Jane Moir, Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika, 1890 Ada Slatter, Transvaal, East African Protectorate and Rhodesia, 1904-21 Editorial Notes The European experience of Africa was multifaceted, reflecting the continent's great geopolitical and cultural heterogeneity. British women visited Africa as part (or sometimes harbingers) of the British empire - as teachers, missionaries, traders, administrators' wives, explorers, tourists and, indeed, convicts. This volume seeks to do justice to this diversity by selecting samples of correspondence by women in different positions and from across the continent. Volume 2: Australia Edited by Deirdre Coleman Volume Introduction Bibliography New South Wales: Elizabeth Macarthur, 1789-1838 Elizabeth Macarthur, junior, 1817-18 Margaret Catchpole, 1802-11 Mary Wild, 1817-26 Christiana Blomfield, 1824-39 Fanny Macleay, 1826-36 Western Australia: Georgiana Molloy, 1832-41 Charlotte Bussell, 1839-53 Tasmania: Jane Franklin, 1837-42 South Australia: Mary Thomas, 1838-40 Editorial Notes The women represented here came to the Australian colonies for a variety of different reasons. They came as convicts or as the wives of free settlers or of army officers. Some were frontier entrepreneurs, managing extensive farms others ran small businesses or inns. They were the wives and daughters of the governing elite or of religious ministers or were pioneer botanists and explorers, exchanging comfortable middle-class lives for servant drudgery in the bush. In their letters they write at length about hardship and loneliness, but the 'home' they invoke is not just the old world they have left behind but the new world which they see themselves as fashioning. Volume 3: Canada Edited by Cecily Devereux and Kathleen Venema Volume Introduction Bibliography Early Colonial Period: Elizabeth Russell to Elizabeth Fairlie Kiernan, 1792-9 Women and Settlement: Rebecca Radcliff to the Reverend Thomas Radcliff and 'Bridget Lacy' to'Mary', 1832 Alice Rendell's Circular Letters, 1903-5 Barbara Alice Slater to Lilian ('Lily Anna') and Ellen Clement, 1809-18 Colonial Administration: Frances Simpson Isobel Finlayson Letitia Hargrave Travelling Women: Anna Brownell Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe, 1836-7 Clara, Lady Rayleigh, to her Mother Editorial Notes This volume covers the period of the conquest of New France (1759-63) to the end of the nineteenth century. The letters are organized chronologically with the letter-writers in three loose categories: colonial wives, travellers, and settlers. Hargrave's letters in particular provide a unique perspective on the fur-trade empire and, amongst other things, its long-term effects on the First Nations and mixed-blood cultures of northern North America. Volume 4: India Edited by Klaus Stierstorfer Introduction Bibliography Family and Society: Sophia Plowden, Calcutta, 1783 Matilda Spry, Bengal, 1856-9 Alice Massy, India 1875 Pioneer Women: Marie Elizabeth Hayes, Missonary Doctor, 1906-7 Margaret Noble / Sister Nivedita, 1911 Cornelia Sorabji to Mary, Lady Hobhouse and to Sir Valentine Chirol, India, 1893- Editorial Notes The two major sections of this volume reflect the perception of 'colonial women' in India as agents in two various directions. Frequently transferred to India along with their husbands posted there, women were instrumental in constituting what could be called a 'home away from home', exporting as much as they could of their accustomed way of life in Britain and reinstituting it as far as possible in India, adapting to and accommodating the new and often 'alien' cultural contexts as they went along. Volume 5: New Zealand Edited by Charlotte J Macdonald Volume Introduction Bibliography Sarah Selwyn, Letters from New Zealand (1842-68) Caroline Abraham, Letters from New Zealand (1850-70) Sarah Greenwood, Letters from New Zealand (1843-89) Jane Maria Atkinson, Letters to Margaret Taylor (1853-1910) Georgina Bowen, Letters from New Zealand (1851-82) Editorial Notes Entering the formal domain of empire relatively late (annexed by Britain only in 1840) New Zealand represented a range of new departures in the imperial project. Edward Gibbon Wakefield's 'systematic colonization' held out the prospect of carefully chosen settlement populations comprising equal numbers of women and men, labourers and capitalists. Women were, from the outset, part of this 'experiment', active participants and observers of its distinct and, at times, rival elements. Volume 6: USA Edited by Susan Imbarrato Introduction Bibliography Domestic Concerns and Familial Connections: Sarah Cary, West Indies and Massachusetts, 1779-1824 Elizabeth Farmar, Philadelphia, 1774-89 Loyalist and Patriot: Anne Hulton, Boston, 1767-76 Esther de Berdt Reed, Philadelphia, 1770-80 Social Concerns and Advocacy: Mary Anne Estlin, Boston and New York, 1868 Editorial Notes Consolidated Index This volume focuses on three main aspects of the American Colonial experience: domestic concerns and familial connections, political perspectives, social concerns and genteel perspectives. It begins by depicting the genteel life of a plantation owner on the social margins of the New World. The volume also includes letters from the Revolutionary period, describing the tumultuous developments leading to war and contrasting loyalist and revolutionary perspectives, providing a vital eyewitness view of the Revolutionary War. Finally the letters focus on the events surrounding the anti-slavery movement and debates over education and suffrage for slaves.

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