Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon

-
Standard Name: Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith
Birth Name: Barbara Leigh Smith
Married Name: Barbara Bodichon
BLSB 's literary work emerged from her convictions as a feminist. Her accounts of women's political, legal, and educational disabilities (in lectures, pamphlets, and an important periodical) played a crucial role in mid-Victorian legal reform and the campaigns for improved employment and educational opportunities for women. She also published a travel diary.
Black and white photograph of Barbara Bodichon in profile, looking towards the right. Her hair is pulled back in a bun, with some part in a single plait. She is wearing a white blouse with a ruffled neckline, and a black jacket with buttons.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Matilda Betham-Edwards
An early literary acquaintance of MBE was the playwright Joseph Stirling Coyne (known as Sterling Coyne), whom she met through her cousin Amelia B. Edwards .
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 1898, p. vi, 354 pp.
130
MBE pursued a lasting friendship with Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Friends, Associates Florence Nightingale
FN 's dissatisfaction with her domestic situation intensified after she returned to England. She came to rely on friends for comfort and intellectual stimulation. She was close to her cousin Hilary Bonham Carter , especially...
Friends, Associates Mary Howitt
MH served on the reception committee for Harriet Beecher Stowe at the time of her visit to England in April 1853. She had by that time become friendly with titled people and with members of...
Friends, Associates George Eliot
Bessie Rayner Parkes (already a friend of Marian Evans—later GE ) introduced her to Barbara Leigh Smith , who became her close confidant and supporter.
Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. W.W. Norton, 1995.
136
Friends, Associates Christina Rossetti
Around this time she became aware of her brother Dante Gabriel 's involvement with Elizabeth Siddal , although she and Siddal met only in 1854 and were never intimate friends. Close family friends of Christina...
Friends, Associates Anna Brownell Jameson
A close friendship developed between ABJ and the future Geroge Eliot, who thought highly of Jameson's work. It was at a literary gathering held in ABJ's home that Barbara Leigh Smith (later Bodichon) first met...
Friends, Associates Jessie Boucherett
Helen Blackburn recounts that JB met Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and Adelaide Procter after casually picking up a copy of the English Woman's Journal at a railway station. She was so impressed with the contents...
Health Anna Mary Howitt
She seems to have had a nervous breakdown after Ruskin destroyed her confidence in her painting ability, a breakdown which expressed itself through spiritualist beliefs: she claimed to be directed in her actions by invisible...
Health Christina Rossetti
She suffered a relapse in spring of 1872. Convalescing in Sussex, she made a visit to her friend Barbara Bodichon at Scalands Cottage near Hastings. She felt that her recovery from what came close...
Intertextuality and Influence Christina Rossetti
In From the Antique, a dramatic lyric composed on 28 June 1854,
Rossetti, Christina. The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti. Editor Crump, Rebecca W., Louisiana State University Press, 1979–1990, 3 vols.
3: 449
CR 's speaker laments: It's a weary life, it is: she said:—
Doubly blank in a woman's lot:
I wish...
Intertextuality and Influence Caroline Norton
The early part of the work summarizing the legal position of women reads much like Barbara Leigh Smith 's A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women, published the...
Literary responses George Eliot
Barbara Bodichon , encountering excerpts from the novel in Algiers, was immediately convinced it was the work of her friend—there is her great big head and heart and her wise wide views
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press, 1954–1978, 9 vols.
3: 56-7
Literary responses Bessie Rayner Parkes
Bodichon , who left much of the journal's management to BRP after moving abroad, felt that Parkes had a wildly exaggerated sense of the importance of her work.
Rendall, Jane. “A Moral Engine? Feminism, Liberalism and the English Womans JournalEqual or Different: Womens Politics 1800-1914, edited by Jane Rendall, Basil Blackwell, 1987, pp. 112-38.
120
George Eliot , while acknowledging that...
Literary responses Isa Craig
One of the readers of the English Woman's Journal, Marian Lewes , wrote to its proprietor, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon , to say how deeply she had been affected by Infant Seamstresses. Supposing...
Material Conditions of Writing Anna Kingsford
As a young married woman, AK became active in the women's movement with the likes of Frances Power Cobbe , Barbara Bodichon , and Elizabeth Wolstenholme ; this soon led to her first distinctly political publication.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.