8:7500 Seminar:
Victorian Women Writers: Women as Memoirists and Social Commentators

6:30-7:45 p. m. MW N218 Lindquist Center

January 21st Wednesday opening session; tentative syllabus; remarks on course assignments and organization; comments on women’s autobiographies; handouts from Linda Peterson’s Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography and Boos, essay on women’s memoirs.

January 26th  Monday The Autobiography of Elizabeth Oakley [Katie, questions]
January 28th Wednesday Margaret Oliphant, Autobiography, ed. Elizabeth Jay [original, not the rearranged and excerpted version] [Anna, questions]

Background readings from Joanne Shattock, ed., British Women Writers 1800-1900, chapters 1 and 2 [Heidi, summary, poss. questions]
February 2nd Monday Frances Trollope, Michael Armstrong, Factory Boy [on internet] [Marija, questions]
February 4th Wednesday Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth; handout from Linda Hughes and Michael Lund, Victorian Publishing and Mrs. Gaskell’s Work; Shattock, chap. 4
February 6th Friday First Icon posting

February 9th Monday Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth
February 11th Wednesday Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, bks. 1 and 2; Shattock, 5

February 16th Monday Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, bks. 3 and 4
February 18th Wednesday Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, bks. 5-7

February 23rd Monday Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, bks. 8 and 9
February 25th Wednesday ------
February 27th Friday Second Icon posting

March 2nd Monday essays Sydney Owenson, “Woman and Her Master,” Anna Jameson, Janet Hamilton, Caroline Norton, “English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century,” Emily Davies, “Some Account of a Proposed New College for Women,” Webster, Protection for the Working Woman” [will provide scans]
March 4th Wednesday Florence Nightingale, Cassandra

March 9th Monday Augusta Webster, “Circe”/”Mother and Daughter”/”Faded” [handout, Christine Sutphin, introduction to Broadview Anthology of Augusta Webster’s poetry; “Circe” and “Faded” are in Victorian Women Poets, ed. Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds, henceforth VWP]
March 11th Wednesday Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market” and other poems, including “My Secret,” “A Royal Princess,” “In an Artist’s Studio” [handout on Christina Rossetti, poss. from Blackwell Companion to Victorian Poetry; selections in VWP]
March 13th Friday Third Icon posting

March 16th and 18th spring break

March 23rd Monday Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Shattock , 5 and 7
March 25th Wednesday Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

March 30th Monday George Eliot, Felix Holt
April 1st Wednesday George Eliot, Felix Holt
April 3rd Friday Fourth Icon posting

April 5th Monday George Eliot, Felix Holt
April 8th Wednesday George Eliot, Felix Holt

April 13th Monday Margaret Oliphant, “The Open Door,” “Old Lady Mary”
April 15th Wednesday George Egerton, “Down Under,” Sarah Grand, “The Undefinable: A Fantasia.” [I will scan the short stories for you.]
April 17th Friday Fifth Icon posting

April 20th Monday Olive Schreiner, The Story of An African Farm
April 22nd Wednesday Olive Schreiner, The Story of An African Farm

April 27th Monday Mathilde Blind, sonnets, lyrics [VWP], “The Heather on Fire” (available on internet); Mairi MacPherson, “The Incitement of the Gaels” [handout]
April 29th Wednesday essays, Eleanor Marx, “The Woman Question,” Mona Caird, “The Morality of Marriage,” Cobbe, “Wife-Torture in England,” Edith Simcox, “The Capacity of Women,” Grand, “New Aspect of the Woman Question,” Bertha Tomas, “Latest Intelligence from the Planet Venus”
May 1st Friday or later Sixth Icon posting

April 30th-May 2nd Midwest Victorian Studies Association Conference to be held in Old Capitol and Gerber Lounge; Iowa Graduate Victorianists present Atilla My Atilla at the Sheraton Hotel dining hall, May 1st, 2015.

May 4th Monday poems by May Kendall, May Probyn, Constance Naden
May 8th Wednesday Mary Coleridge, “The White Women,” Charlotte Mew, “The Trees Are Down” [selections in VWP]
First set of presentations on seminar papers

Exam week: final course meeting Monday May 11th or Tuesday May 12th (your choice); presentations of seminar papers.

Please hand in your semester essays in final form by Friday May 15th, 2015, accompanied if possible by a printout of your Icon postings.