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Elite women and pressure group politics

1. Account for the importance of philanthropy to elite women.

2. To what extent did the anti-slavery movement rely upon the specific contribution made by women?

3. Did women bring a unique perspective to electoral politics and to local government?

Key reading

Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (London, 1992), ch. 6

Gleadle, Kathryn. British Women in the Nineteenth Century, chs. 5, 11

Midgley, Clare. Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780-1870

Prochaska, F. ‘Women in English Philanthropy, 1790-1830’, International Review of Social History (1974)

TLTP History Courseware - Part III: Women and the Movement against Slavery

Anti-slavery and Pressure Group Politics

Billington, Louis and Billington, Rosamund. ‘‘A Burning Zeal for Righteousness’: Women in the British Anti-Slavery Movement, 1820-1860’ in Rendall, Jane (ed), Equal or Different: Women’s Politics 1800-1914 (Oxford, 1987)

Corfield, K. ‘Elizabeth Heyrick: Radical Quaker’ in Malmgreen (ed), Religions in the Lives of English Women

Midgley, Clare. ‘From Supporting Missions to Petitioning Parliament: British Women and the Evangelical Campaign against Sati in India, 1813-30’ in Gleadle, Kathryn and Richardson, Sarah (eds), Women in British Politics, 1760-1860: The Power of the Petticoat

Morgan, Simon, ‘Domestic Economy and Political Agitation: Women and the Anti-Corn Law League, 1839-46’ in Gleadle and Richardson (eds), Women in British Politics, 1760-1860

Pickering, Paul and Tyrell, Alex. The People’s Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League, ch. 6

Rendall, Jane. The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States, 1780-1860, ch. 7

Tyrell, Alex. ‘Women’s mission and Pressure Group Politics in Britain, 1825-60’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, (1980)

Ware, Vron. ‘An Abhorrence of Slavery’ in Ware (ed), Beyond the Pale. White Women, Racism and History#

Philanthropy

Gerrard, J ‘Lady Bountiful: Women of the Landed Class and Rural Philanthropy’, Victorian Studies, (1987)#

Koven, Seth. ‘Borderlands: Women, Voluntary Action and Child Welfare in Britain’ in Koven and Michel (eds), Mothers of a New World

Prochaska, F. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England

Rendall, Jane. The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States, 1780-1860, ch. 7

Reynolds, Kim. Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain, pp. 91-128

Summers, Anne. ‘A Home from Home’ in Burman (ed), Fit Work for Women

Twells,Alison. ‘Let All Begin Well at Home: Class, Ethnicity and Christian Motherhood’ in Yeo, Radical Femininity

Party and Electoral Politics

Campbell, Beatrix. Iron Ladies: Why do Women Vote Tory?, ch. 1

Gleadle, Kathryn and Richardson, Sarah (eds), Women in British Politics, 1760-1860: The Power of the Petticoat, especially chs. 1, 3, 7 and 8

Hirschfield, Claire. ‘A Fractured Faith: Liberal Party Women and the Suffrage Issue’, Gender and History, (1980)

Jalland, Pat. Women, Marriage and Politics, chs. 7,8

Maguire, G. E. Conservative Women

Pugh, Martin. The Tories and the People, ch.3

Rendall, Jane (ed), Equal or Different: Women’s Politics 1800-1914

Reynolds, Kim. Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain

Richardson, Sarah. ‘The Role of Women in Electoral Politics’, Northern History, (1996)

Rowan, C. ‘Women in the Labour Party’, Feminist Review, (1982)

Rubenstein, David. Before the Suffragettes, pp. 150-64

Sweet, Rosemary.’Women and Civic Life in Eighteenth-Century England’ in Sweet and Lane (eds) Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England

Vickery, Amanda (ed). Women, Privilege and Power: British Politics, 1750 to the Present, especially chs. 1-4