Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ray Strachey
-
Standard Name: Strachey, Ray
Birth Name: Rachel Pearsall Conn Costelloe
Nickname: Ray
Married Name: Rachel Mary Strachey
Though RS
published three novels between 1907 and 1927 (and a volume of history in collaboration with her husband
), most of her writing is non-fictional and reflects her deep commitment to women's suffrage, women's employment, and other political issues. Her nonfiction includes biographies of suffrage leaders, countless essays and broadcasts, and The Cause, an excellent history of the women's movement, for which she is best remembered.
Chapman, Wayne K., and Janet M. Manson, editors. Women in the Milieu of Leonard and Virginia Woolf: Peace, Politics, and Education. Pace University Press, 1998.
257-8
Halpern, Barbara Strachey. “Ray Strachey--A Memoir”. Women in the Milieu of Leonard and Virginia Woolf: Peace, Politics, and Education, edited by Wayne K. Chapman and Janet M. Manson, Pace University Press, 1998, pp. 77-86.
ER
contributed an essay on Changes in Public Life to Our Freedom and Its Results, a feminist anthology edited by Ray Strachey
and published by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf
.
Pedersen, Susan. Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience. Yale University Press, 2004.
380
Cultural formation
Mary Stott
Mary's mother took her to Liberal meetings while she was still a girl. From her early twenties, when she read Ray Strachey
's The Cause, she developed her own feminist agenda.
Stott, Mary. Forgetting’s No Excuse. Faber and Faber, 1973.
131
death
Millicent Garrett Fawcett
She commissioned Ray Strachey
, her life-long friend, to be her official biographer; but a feminist of a later generation, Ann Oakley
, has speculated that she probably required from Strachey discretion and even self-censorship...
Education
Augusta Webster
Suffragist historian Ray Strachey
relates that AW
jeopardized the prospects of women students at the South Kensington Art School
when she was expelled for whistling.
Strachey, Ray. The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain. Virago, 1978.
96
Webster, Augusta. “Introduction”. Portraits and Other Poems, edited by Christine Sutphin, Broadview, 2000, pp. 9-37.
10
Family and Intimate relationships
Amabel Williams-Ellis
Amabel Strachey had a long roster of talented, accomplished relations by birth and marriage. Within her own generation her cousins or cousins by marriage included the writers Lytton Strachey
, Ray Strachey
, and Dorothy Bussy
Oliver Strachey
, like a number of Strachey men, worked with the East India Company
. His second wife was Rachel (Ray) Costelloe
, Newnham College
graduate, women's rights activist, and author, best known for...
Friends, Associates
Mary Agnes Hamilton
MAH
's memoirs give detailed and affectionate pen-portraits of innumerable friends, made both at home and in many of the other countries she travelled or worked in. Many of her English friends are known names...
Friends, Associates
Julia Strachey
JS
took a room at the home of her father and stepmother, Oliver
and Ray Strachey
, who lived at 42 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury.
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown, 1983.
104
Friends, Associates
Julia Strachey
JS
was at Brackenhurst in 1911 when her father, Oliver
, married his second wife, feminist author and activist Ray Costelloe Strachey
.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Hussey, Mark. Virginia Woolf A to Z. Facts on File, 1995.
278
Julia admired her new stepmother but was not close to the couple.
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown, 1983.
45, 51
Friends, Associates
Julia Strachey
Shortly after the wedding, Julia became the charge of Alys Russell
, a suffrage and temperance activist who was also the aunt of Ray (Costelloe) Strachey
, sister of writer Logan Pearsall Smith
and Mary Berenson
Literary responses
Sylvia Pankhurst
The book was well received, and enhanced SP
's reputation with the general public. George Bernard Shaw
praised it in a speech on the BBC
in which he compared SP
to Joan of Arc
...
Literary responses
Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Ray Strachey
praises MGF
's biography of Molesworth as one of the most interesting of her books.
Strachey, Ray. Millicent Garrett Fawcett. J. Murray, 1931.
187
Strachey explains that Molesworth had championed the cause of co-operation with the British colonies in their efforts...
Kahane, Claire. “The Aesthetic Politics of Rage”. LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, Vol.
3
, No. 1, 1991, pp. 19-31.
28
uses its feminist theories in The Subjection of Women. Virginia Woolf
quotes from it in A Room of One's Own.
Webb, Val. Florence Nightingale: The Making of a Radical Theologian. Chalice, 2002.
102
Literary responses
Florence Nightingale
Ray Strachey
called this book very long, and further claimed that its arrangement is very confused . . . it is a highly wearisome book to read. It is full of repetitions, and of...
Timeline
March 1858: The English Woman's Journal, a monthly magazine...
Women writers item
March 1858
The English Woman's Journal, a monthly magazine on the theory and practice of organised feminism, began publication in London, with financial support from Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
and others, under the editorship of...
15 April 1909: The Common Cause, the official organ of the...
Mappen, Ellen. Helping Women at Work: The Women’s Industrial Council, 1889-1914. Hutchinson in association with the Explorations in Feminism Collective, 1985.
26
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
26 July 1913: The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies...
Hume, Leslie Parker. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, 1897-1914. Garland, 1982.
199
Tickner, Lisa. The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907-1914. University of Chicago Press, 1988.
145-7
April 1935-June 1936: Stephen King-Hall published a children's...
Writing climate item
April 1935-June 1936
Stephen King-Hall
published a children's journal called Mine, A Magazine for All who are Young.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Texts
Strachey, Ray. A Quaker Grandmother, Hannah Whitall Smith. Fleming H. Revell Company, 1914.
Strachey, Ray. Careers and Openings for Women. Faber and Faber, 1935.
Rathbone, Eleanor. “Changes in Public Life”. Our Freedom and Its Results, edited by Ray Strachey, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, 1936.
Strachey, Ray. Frances Willard: Her Life and Work. T. Fisher Unwin, 1912.
Strachey, Ray. Marching On. Jonathan Cape, 1923.
Strachey, Ray. Millicent Garrett Fawcett. J. Murray, 1931.
Strachey, Ray, editor. Our Freedom and Its Results. Leonard and Virginia Woolf, 1936.
Strachey, Ray, editor. Religious Fanaticism. Faber and Gwyer, 1928.
Strachey, Ray. Shaken by the Wind: A Story of Fanaticism. Faber and Gwyer, 1927.
Strachey, Ray. The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain. G. Bell and Sons, 1928.
Strachey, Ray. The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain. Virago, 1978.
Strachey, Ray. The World at Eighteen. T. Fisher Unwin, 1907.
Strachey, Ray. Women’s Suffrage and Women’s Service. London and National Society for Women’s Service, 1927.
