William Thomas Stead

Standard Name: Stead, William Thomas

Used Form: W. T. Stead

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Anthologization	Mary Frere	MF calls herself the collector, not the author. She first persuaded Anna Liberata to begin telling stories one day when, as the only woman in the elaborate camp attending her father, she was at a...
Cultural formation	Annie S. Swan	After her son's death ASS , like so many others, made some approaches towards spiritualism. Her first experience, with a medium named Husk, repelled her by its crassness and triviality. A second experience, during the...
Education	Christina Stead	CS 's father would have liked to have her education entirely in his own hands. The first books to be her favourites were the works of W. T. Stead , and fairy stories by the...
Family and Intimate relationships	Annie Besant	William Stead , a political ally of AB , arranged for her to meet Madame Blavatsky . Taylor, Anne, 1932 -. Annie Besant: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1992. 240
Family and Intimate relationships	Annie Besant	She later declared her love for William Stead , which he did not return. Taylor, Anne, 1932 -. Annie Besant: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1992. 200-1
Friends, Associates	Annie Besant	AM continued participation in the Law and Liberty League , which she had helped William Stead (for whom she entertained an unreciprocated love) to found the previous autumn. Taylor, Anne, 1932 -. Annie Besant: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1992. 200-1
Friends, Associates	Flora Shaw	Here she became a friend of novelist and neighbour George Meredith , who introduced her to a wider social circle, including W.T. Stead , the scandalous journalist and editor of the Pall Mall Gazette...
Friends, Associates	Marie Belloc Lowndes	As a child she had already met several distinguished writers in England, and Mary Clarke Mohl and Turgenev in France. Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan, 1941. 369-70 As a young adult she quickly became known to many eminent members of the...
Intertextuality and Influence	Marie Belloc Lowndes	MBL decided in her teens that she wanted to be a writer. In 1887, with the encouragement of her mother (who was based in France) the two of them embarked on a winter in the...
Literary responses	Victoria Cross	Reviewers were more approving of Six Chapters of a Man's Life than of many previous Cross novels. The Aberdeen Free Press, for instance, praised her uncommon literary ability, and in the Review of Reviews...
Literary responses	Victoria Cross	Reviews continued to attack Cross's supposed immorality, even as some acknowledged the force of her writing. The New York Times postulated from Life's Shop Window that Victoria Cross, presumably, is a woman, and perhaps...
Literary responses	Ella Hepworth Dixon	Once published, the novel was an astounding success. Fehlbaum, Valerie. Ella Hepworth Dixon: the Story of a Modern Woman. Ashgate, 2005. 127 The New York Times reviewer drew parallels between it and Sara Jeannette Duncan 's A Daughter of To-Day (1894). Dixon, Ella Hepworth. The Story of a Modern Woman. Editor Farmer, Steve, Broadview, 2004. 196-7, 196n1 Many contemporary reviewers found Dixon's...
Literary responses	Emma Frances Brooke	W. T. Stead 's rapid and strong disaproval of the novel on grounds of immorality in the Pall Mall Gazette spelled instant notoriety. Despite EFB 's moral purpose, Stead declared: its whole significance lies in...
Literary responses	Anna Kingsford	The Perfect Way was virtually ignored by the mainstream press, though it received a one-line notice in W. T. Stead 's Review of Reviews: Mystical, and very suggestive from the standpoint of the Christian...
Literary responses	Josephine Butler	Initial sales of the work were not strong. W. T. Stead endeavoured to help by promoting the work as the Book of the Month in his Review of Reviews for October 1896. Jordan, Jane. Josephine Butler. John Murray, 2001. 276

Timeline

7 February 1865

The first issue appeared of George Smith 's innovative evening newspaper, The Pall Mall Gazette.

Haight, Gordon S. George Eliot: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1968.

380

Clarke, Bob. From Grub Street to Fleet Street. Ashgate, 2004.

258-9, 262

Bourne, H. R. Fox. English Newspapers. Russell and Russell, 1966, 2 vols.

2: 273, 274, 339, 341, 342

“Concise History of the British Newspaper in the Nineteenth Century”. The British Library: The World’s Knowledge.

Later 1884

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (later the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or NSPCC) was founded.

Bristow, Edward. Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain Since 1700. Gill and Macmillan, 1977.

Jackson, Louise A. Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England. Routledge, 2000.

16, 54-55

6 July 1885

The first instalment of W. T. Stead 's Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, exposing the alleged sale of young girls in prostitution.

Walkowitz, Judith R. ’We Are Not Beasts of the Field’: Prostitution and the Campaign Against the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1869-1886. University of Rochester, 1974.

131