Eliza Lynn Linton

Eliza Lynn Linton (10 February 1822 – 14 July 1898) was a British novelist, essayist, and anti-feminist journalist.

Life [edit]

Eliza Lynn Linton was the first female salaried journalist and author of over 20 novels. Born in Keswick, Cumbria, England, the daughter of the Rev. J. Lynn, vicar of Crosthwaite, and granddaughter of a bishop of Carlisle, she arrived in London in 1845 as the protégé of poet Walter Savage Landor. In the following year she produced her first novel, Azeth, the Egyptian; Amymone (1848), and Realities (1851), followed. None of these had any great success, and she became a journalist, joining the staff of the Morning Chronicle, and Household Words.

In 1858^[1] she married W. J. Linton, an eminent wood-engraver, who was also a poet of some note, a writer upon his craft, and a Chartist agitator. In 1867 they separated in a friendly way, the husband going to America, and the wife returning to writing novels, in which she finally attained wide popularity. Her most successful works were The True History of Joshua Davidson (1872), Patricia Kemball (1874), and Christopher Kirkland. She was a constant contributor to the St James’s Gazette, the Daily News and other leading newspapers.^[2]

She was also a severe critic of feminism. Her most famous essay on this subject, "The Girl of the Period,"^[3] was published in Saturday Review in 1868 and was a vehement attack on feminism. In 1891, she wrote "Wild Women as Politicians" which explained her opinion that politics was naturally the sphere of men, as was fame of any sort. "Amongst our most renowned women," she wrote, "are some who say with their whole heart, 'I would rather have been the wife of a great man, or the mother of a hero, than what I am, famous in my own person." Mrs Linton is a leading example of the fact that the fight against votes for Women was not only organised by men.

Her obituary in The Times noted her "animosity towards all, or rather, some of those facets which may be conveniently called the 'New Woman'," but added that "it would perhaps be difficult to reduce Mrs. Lynn Linton's views on what was and what was not desirable for her own sex to a logical and connected form."

Works [edit]

• Azeth, The Egyptian, T.C. Newby, 1847.
• Amymone: A Romance in the Days of Pericles, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Richard Bentley, 1848.
• Realities: A Tale, Saunders and Otley, 1851.
• Witch Stories, Chapman & Hall, 1861.
• The Lake Country, Smith, Elder and Company, 1864.
• Grasp Your Nettle, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Smith, Elder & Co., 1865.
• Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg: A Novel, Harper & Brothers, 1866.
• Sowing the Wind, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Tinsley Brothers 1867.
• "Clementina Kinniside," The Galaxy 5, January/July, 1868.
• The True History of Joshua Davidson, Christian and Communist, J.B. Lippincott, 1873 [1st Pub. Strahan & Company, 1872].
• Patricia Kemball, J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1875.
• The Mad Willoughbys and other Tales, 1875.
• The Atonement of Leam Dundas, J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1876.
• From Dreams to Waking, Harper & Bros, 1877.
• The World Well Lost, Vol. 2, Chatto & Windus, 1877.
• Under which Lord?, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Chatto & Windus, 1879.
• "At Night in a Hospital," Belgravia, July 1879.
• The Rebel of the Family, Vol. 2, Chatto & Windus, 1880.
• With a Silken Thread and other Stories, Chatto & Windus, 1880.
• My Love!, Chatto & Windus, 1881.
• Ione, Chatto and Windus, 1883.
• The Girl of the Period and Other Social Essays, Vol. 2, Richard Bentley & Son, 1883.
• Ourselves: Essays on Women, Chatto & Windus, 1884.
• The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, R. Bently, 1885.
• Stabbed in the Dark, F. V. White & Co., 1885.
• "A Protest and a Plea," The Order of Creation: The Conflict Between Genesis and Geology, The Truth Seeker Company, 1885.
• Rift in the Lute, Simpkin, 1885.
• Paston Carew, Millionaire and Miser: A Novel, Bentley, 1886.
• Through the Long Night, Hurst & Blackett Limited, 1889.
• About Ireland, Methuen & Co., 1890.
• An Octave of Friends, with other Silhouettes and Stories, Ward & Downey, 1891.
• About Ulster, Methuen & Co., 1892.
• The One too Many, F. Tennyson Neely, 1894.
• In Haste and at Leisure, Merriam Co., 1895.
• Dulcie Everton, Vol. 2, Chatto & Windus, 1896.
• 'Twixt Cup & Lip. Etc, Digby, Long & Co., 1896.
• My Literary Life, Hodder and Stroughton, 1899.
• The Second Youth of Theodora Desanges, Hutchinson & Co., 1900.
• The Fate of Madame Cabanel, n.d.^[4]
• The Witches of Scotland, n.d.

Articles [edit]

• "The Modern Revolt," Macmillan's Magazine, December 1870.
• "Some Sicilian Customs," The Eclectic Magazine 41, New Series, 1885.
• “The Higher Education of Women,” Popular Science Monthly 30, December 1886.
• "Womanhood in Old Greece," The Library Magazine 2, Third Series, November 1886 – March 1887.
• "The Tyranny of Fashion," The Forum 3, March 1887.
• “The Roman Matron,” The Library Magazine 4, Third Series, July – September 1887.
• “The Pains of Fear,” The Forum 5, May 1888.
• “Are Good Women Characterless?,” The Forum 6, February 1889.
• “Democracy in the Household,” The Forum 8, September 1889.
• "Our Illusions," Fortnightly Review 49, pp. 596–7, 1891.
• "The Revolt Against Matrimony," The Forum 10, Nº. 5, January 1891.
• "The Judicial Shock to Marriage," Nineteenth Century 29, May 1891.
• "The Wild Women: as Politicians," Nineteenth Century, July 1891.
• "The Wild Women As Social Insurgents," The Nineteenth Century 30, pp. 596–605, October 1891.
• "The Partisans of the Wild Woman," Nineteenth Century 31, April 1892.
• "The New Woman," St. James's Budget, July 1894.
• "The Rex Nemorum," St. James's Budget, August 1894.
• "The Philistine's Coming Triumph," National Review 26, September 1895.
• "Cranks and Crazes," The North American Review, December 1895.
• "George Eliot." In Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, Hurst & Blackett, Limited, 1897.

References [edit]

1. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 22 January 2009. 
2. ^ "Linton, Eliza Lynn," The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, 1911.
3. ^ Modern Women and What Is Said of Them: A Reprint of a Series of Articles in The Saturday Review, p. 25, J. S. Redfield, 1868. Reprinted again in The Living Age, April 22, 1922.
4. ^ The Fate of Madame Cabanel, The New York Times, January 19, 1873.

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Wikisource

• George Somes Layard, Mrs. Lynn Linton; Her Life, Letters, and Opinions, Methuen & Co., 1901.
• Frederick Sessions, "A Successful Novelist: Eliza Lynn Linton," Literary Celebrities of the English Lake-District, Eliot Stock, 1905.
• Herbert Van Thal, Eliza Lynn Linton: The Girl of the Period: A Biography. (London; Boston : Allen and Unwin, 1979).
• Christopher Herbert, "He Knew He Was Right, Mrs. Lynn Linton, and the Duplicities of Victorian Marriage," Texas Studies in Literature and Language 25 (3), 1983.
• Nancy Fix Anderson, Woman Against Women in Victorian England: A Life of Eliza Lynn Linton. (Indiana University Press, 1987).
• Nancy Fix Anderson, "Eliza Lynn Linton, Dickens, and the Woman Question," Victorian Periodicals Review 22, No. 4, Winter, 1989.
• Deirdre d'Albertis, "Make-believers in Bayswater and Belgravia: Bronte, Linton, and the Victorian Flirt," Victorians Institute Journal 24, 1996.
• Elizabeth Latta Brother, "A Profession of Their Own: A Study of the Journalistic, Margaret Oliphant, Eliza Lynn Linton, and Emilia Dilke," Dissertation Abstracts International 60 (5), November 1999.
• Andrea Lynn Broomfield, "Much More Than an Antifeminist: Eliza Lynn Linton's Controbutions to the Rise of Victorian Popular Journalism," Victorian Literature and Culture 29 (2), pp. 267–83, 2001.
• Judith Flanders, Inside the Victorian Home: a Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004).

External links [edit]

• Works by Eliza Lynn Linton at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML).
• Works by Eliza Lynn Linton at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated).

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