Women Writing Home, 1700–1920:

Female Correspondence across the British Empire

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General Editor: Klaus Stierstorfer
Volume Editors: Deirdre Coleman, Cecily Devereux, Susan Imbarrato, Charlotte J Macdonald, Klaus Stierstorfer, Silke Strickrodt and Kathleen Venema

Women Writing Home assembles a wide range of women’s letters from the former British Empire, in the most comprehensive, modern and scholarly reset edition to date.

These letters ‘written home’ are not only straightforward historical sources; they are also representations of the state of the Empire in far-off lands sent home to Britain and, occasionally, other centres established as ‘home’. The letters reveal the many different ways in which women perceived colonial society. Sometimes the new context offered opportunities unavailable at home but often these letter-writing women pined for what they had left behind.

Organized by geographical region, the set pays close attention to the regional and local specificities of colonial situations in various parts of the British Empire: from the settler colonies of North America, Australia and New Zealand to the isolated military and administrative outposts in Asia and the complex ethnic and economic situation of South Africa.

These six volumes of letters are an important research tool for those working in a wide range of disciplines, from history to economics, from literature to cultural and gender studies.

• Most of the letters have never before been published
• Based on new transcriptions of manuscript sources from archives around the world
• Consolidated index

Sample pages

• Volume 1: Africa, sample letter by Jane F Moir
• Volume 2: Australia, sample letter by Margaret Catchpole
• Volume 6: USA, sample letter by Esther de Berdt Reed

Contents

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 König/Knödler, 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.

Reviews

'This extensive collection offers a treasure trove of insights into the daily lives, challenges and preoccupations of women across the British Empire ... almost 2,000 richly textured pages, offer numerous ‘appetizers and incitements’ to future research.'
– Marjory Harper, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Related titles

• Britain in India, 1765–1905
• British Immigration to the United States, 1776–1914
• Empire of Political Thought : Indigenous Australians and the Language of Colonial Government
• Victorian Settler Narratives : Emigrants, Cosmopolitans and Returnees in Nineteenth-Century Literature

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