Missionary domesticity, global reform and 'woman's sphere' in early nineteenth-century England

Gender and History

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 266-284

  Twells, Alison ^a  

^a SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVIL SOCIETY; INFANTICIDE; NINETEENTH CENTURY; SOCIAL HISTORY;

ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33845733691     PISSN: 09535233     EISSN: 14680424     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0424.2006.00429.x     Document Type: Article

References (113)

1. Mary-Anne Rawson, Mary-Anne Rawson papers, John Rylands Library, Manchester (MAR/JR),743/62-3, emphasis in the original.
2. Clare Midgley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780-1870 (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 116. For the contribution of anti-slavery to early feminist politics, see Clare Midgley, 'Anti-Slavery and Feminism in Nineteenth-Century Britain', Gender & History 5 (1993), pp. 343-62; Clare Midgley, 'Anti-Slavery and the Roots of "Imperial Feminism"', in Clare Midgley (ed.), Gender and Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 161-79; also Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History (London: Verso, 1992).
3. Mary-Anne Rawson, 'Memorials of James Montgomery' (unpublished, 1857), James Montgomery Collection, Sheffield University (JM/SU), no page numbers.
4. Rawson, 'Memorials of James Montgomery'.
5. See Donald R. Kennon, '"An Apple of Discord": The Woman Question at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840', Slavery and Abolition 5 (1984), pp. 244-66; Kathryn Kish Sklar, '"Women Who Speak for an Entire Nation ": American and BritishWomen at theWorld Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840', Pacific Historical Review 59 (1990), pp. 453-99.
6. Midgley, Women against Slavery, p. 165. Rawson reflected dispassionately on the incident on the occasion of William Lloyd Garrison's visit to her home at Wincobank Hall in 1877. In a letter to her nephew, Henry JosephWilson, and his wife, Charlotte, she merely recalled that Garrison, her 'great hero', had been 'vexed at the women not being allowed to speak, and Mr Sturge with him for wishing it'. Mary-Anne Rawson to Henry Joseph and Charlotte Wilson, July 1877, Mary-Anne Rawson Papers, Sheffield City Archives, H. J. Wilson Collection (MAR/HJW), MD 5693.
7. See Midgley, 'Anti-Slavery and Feminism in Nineteenth-Century Britain'; Kathryn Gleadle, The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women's Rights Movement, 1831-51 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995); Helen Plant, 'Gender and the Aristocracy of Dissent: A Comparative Study of the Beliefs, Status and Roles of Women in Quaker and Unitarian Communities, 1770-1830, With Particular Reference to Yorkshire' (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of York, 2000).
8. See Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Stanford: University of California Press, 1999); Rhonda Semple, Missionary Women: Gender, Professionalism and the Victorian Idea of Christian Mission (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003).
9. See Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 'Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse', in Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 51-80; Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989); Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel, Expanding the Boundaries of Women's History: Essays on Women in the Third World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).
10. Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, IndianWomen, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
11. Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Women of England, Their Social Duties, and Domestic Habits (London: Fisher, Son & Co., 1839); The Daughters of England, Their Position in Society, Character and Responsibilities (London: Fisher, Son & Co, 1842); The Wives of England, Their Relative Duties, Domestic Influence and Social Obligations (London: Fisher, Son & Co., 1843); and The Mothers of England, Their Influence and Responsibility (London: Fisher, Son & Co., 1843).
12. Ann Taylor Gilbert to Anne Knight, in Josiah Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and other emorials of Mrs Gilbert (London: Henry S. King, 1874), pp. 185-8.
13. Clare Midgley, 'Female Emancipation in an Imperial Frame: EnglishWomen and the Campaign against Sati (Widow Burning) in India, 1813-1830', Women's History Review 9 (2000), pp. 95-121; Clare Midgley, 'From Supporting Missions to Petitioning Parliament: English Women and the Evangelical Campaign against "Sati" (Widow-Burning) in India, 1813-1830', in Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson, Women in British Politics: The Power of the Petticoat (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 74-92.
14. Writers such as John Millar (Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, 1771) andWilliam Robertson (History of America, 1777) drew on transhistorical and cross-cultural comparisons to develop their theory of stadial progress to explain cultural difference and historical change. Alongside shifts in the mode of production, social institutions, ideas of justice and property, custom and culture, stadial development also saw men and women coming to occupy separate spheres. See Gladys Bryson, Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968); Ronald Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Anand Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment: A Social History (London: Croom Helm, 1976); Jane Rendall (ed.), 'Introduction' to William Alexander, History of Women, from the Earliest Antiquity to the Present Time, 2 vols (1781; repr. Bath: Thoemmes Press, 1994).
15. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London: Hutchinson, 1987).
16. Clare Midgley 'Can Women be Missionaries? Envisioning Female Agency in the Early Nineteenth-Century British Empire', Journal of British Studies 45 (2006), pp. 335-358; see also Alison Twells, The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792-1857: The Heathen at Home and Overseas (forthcoming, Palgrave), for further discussion of these issues.
17. Alison Twells, '"Let us Begin Well at Home": Class, Ethnicity and Christian Motherhood in the Writing of Hannah Kilham', in Eileen Janes Yeo (ed.), Radical Femininity: Women's Self-Representation in the Public Sphere (Manchester:MAnchester University Press, 1998), pp. 25-51; Joyce Goodman, 'Languages of Female Colonial Authority: The Educational Network of the Ladies Committee of the British and Foreign School Society, 1813-1837', Compare 30 (2000), pp. 7-19; Joyce Goodman, 'At the Centre of a Circle whose Circumference Spans All Nations: The Ladies Committee of the British and Foreign School Society, 1813-1837', in Sue Morgan (ed.), Religion and Feminism in Modern Britain, 750-1950 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2002), pp. 53-69.
18. For a useful deployment of the term 'missionary public', see Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830-1867 (Oxford: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 293-4, 299.
19. Many accounts vastly underplay the extent of women's participation in both individual missionary philanthropic societies and in the missionary public more broadly. See Frank Prochaska,Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 5; Roger H. Martin, Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-Victorian Britain, 1795-1830 (New Jersey and London: Scarecrow Press, 1983), pp. 114-16. See also Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 429-36. Catherine Hall tends to repeat this under-assessment in Hall, Civilising Subjects, pp. 293-4, 299.
20. Hannah More, Hints Towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess, 2 vols (London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1805), p. 381. See also Hannah More, An Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of Saint Paul, 2 vols (4th edn, London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1815), vol. 2, pp. 342-8; vol. 1, pp. 65-6; vol. 1, pp.1-2, 8-9.
21. See Jane Rendall, 'Women and the Public Sphere', Gender & History 11 (1999), pp. 475-88.
22. For challenges to a too rigid application of 'separate spheres', see Kathryn Gleadle, '"The Age of Physiological Reformers": Rethinking Gender and Domesticity in the Age of Reform', in Arthur Burns and Joanna Innes (eds), Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain 1780-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 200-19; Kathryn Gleadle, '"Our Several Spheres": Middle-ClassWomen and the Feminisms of Early Victorian Radical Politics', in Gleadle and Richardson (eds),Women in British Politics, pp. 134-52; Zoe Laidlaw, '"Aunt Anna's Report": The Buxton Women and the Aborigines Select Committee 1834-37', Journal of Commonwealth and Imperial History 32 (2004), pp. 1-28; Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair, Public Lives: Women, Family and Society in Victorian BritaiA (NewHaven:Yale University Press, 2003).
23. Mary-Anne, Eliza, Catherine, Emily and Sarah Read were born between 1800 and 1807; Edmund was born in 1815; Julia (1817-1818), died in infancy.
24. James Boden was involved with the early LMS, established in 1795. For the Reads, see Ronald E.Wilson, Two Hundred Precious Metal Years:AHistory of the Sheffield Smelting Company Ltd, 1760-1960 (London: Ernest Benn, 1960), pp. 3-108. For the Smiths, see Philip Robinson, The Smiths of Chesterfield: A History of the Griffin Foundry, Brampton 1775-1833 (Chesterfield: Thomas Brayshaw, 1957).
25. Rawson, 'Memorials of James Montgomery' (JM/SU). This and the following paragraph are based on the discussion of Mary-Anne's childhood in Alison Twells, '"Happy English Children": Class, Ethnicity, and the Making of Missionary Women in the Early Nineteenth Century', Women's Studies International Forum 21 (1998), pp. 235-45.
26. Elizabeth Read to Mary-Anne Read, 17 August 1813. See also Elizabeth Read to Mary-Anne Read, 21 November 1813; 21 June 1819; 22 March 1820. Elizabeth Read to Eliza Read, 4 April 1819; 8 August 1819; 4 April 1820, Manchester, MAR/HWJ, MD 6043.
27. Elizabeth Read to Edmund Read, 10 November 1823, MAR/HWJ, MD 5697.
28. For example, Dinah Ball, teacher at a school in Chelsea that Mary-Anne had attended 1816-17, was persuaded to take up a position as governess at the Hall. See Dinah Ball, The Missionary Society, A Dialogue (Sheffield: James Montgomery, n.d.), a short didactic tale, which recounts how middle-class philanthropic girls persuade working men to spend their money in support of the missionary society rather than squander it at a local fair.
29. See e.g., 'Family Miscellany', August 1846; December 1816; 'Family Repository', April 1819; March 1820; 'Wincobank Remembrancer', July 1819; September 1819; 'Wincobank Repository', August 1819, MAR/HJW, MD 5703.
30. Rosman has described English evangelicalism as 'a federation of country houses... [and] godly families'. Doreen M. Rosman, Evangelicals and Culture (London: Croom Helm, 1984), p. 14.
31. George Bennet to Joseph Read, 4 October 1817, MAR/HWJ, MD 5690.
32. Mary-Anne Rawson, 'Treasury of Pen and Pencil Memorials of Absent Friends, 1824-1828' (unpublished, JM/SU).
33. Mary-Anne had married William Bacon Rawson of Nottingham in 1828.
34. Mary-Anne Rawson (ed.), The Bow in the Cloud (London: Jackson & Walford, 1832). For the Sheffield societies of the 1820s and 1830s, see Midgley, Women Against Slavery, pp. 61, 117-18.
35. Sophia Sturge to Mary-Anne Rawson, including extracts of letters from Baptist missionaries, 1838, n.d., MAR/JR/741-113, 113b, 113c. For the free villages in Jamaica, see Catherine Hall, 'White Visions, Black Lives: The FreeVillages of Jamaica', History Workshop Journal 36 (1993), pp. 100-32. Mary-Annewould have been well-acquainted with an earlierWest African experiment in 'free villages', which involved fellow Sheffield missionary Hannah Kilham in the mid-1820s. See Alison Twells, 'Let us Begin Well at Home'.
36. Mary-Anne Rawson, 1845 Circular, MAR/HWJ, MD 5699.
37. Mary-Anne celebrated the children's participation in missionary bazaars, tea-parties, prayer meetings and the creation of their own missionary shop. See Mary-Anne Rawson, Journal, 1842, MAR/HWJ, MD 5704; Elizabeth Read's Diary, 1844-1850, MAR/HWJ,MD 6042. The family had moved to Torquay from Nottingham in 1841 on account of Eliza's poor health (she died from tuberculosis in 1851).
38. Lizzie Rawson to Mary Wilson, 12 January 1838, February 1838, December 1839, 17 August 1843, MAR/HWJ, MD 5698. Only Elizabeth Rawson's side of the correspondence survives.
39. Lizzie Rawson to Mary Wilson, 7 January 1841, 11 January 1843, 12 February 1845, 4 February 1848, 10 February 1848, June 1848, MAR/HWJ, MD 5698. See also George Thompson to Elizabeth Rawson, October 1847, June 1849, MAR/HWJ,MD 5693. George Thompson (1804-1878) was a radical abolitionist, member of the Agency Committee and agent for the Aborigines Protection Society (1839-40) and for the British India Society (from 1840). According to C. Duncan Rice, The Scots Abolitionists, 1833-1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), p. 55, Thompson was 'a superlative orator with somewhat vulgar good looks' who inspired an especially intense following among women.
40. Lizzie Rawson to MaryWilson, May 1844. On another occasion she announced that she had read Moffatt's book and that he was coming to Rotherham on his lecture tour (n.d.), MAR/HWJ, MD 5698.
41. Lizzie Rawson to Mary Wilson, 26 July 1843, 2 March 1848, 17 May 1848, 13 April 1849, MAR/HWJ, MD 5698.
42. See Accaunt Book for Wincobank, 1817-1822, Sarah Read to Elizabeth Read, n.d.; Elizabeth Read to Mary-Anne, 11 February 1828; Eliza Wilson to Mary-Anne Rawson, 22 July 1830; Catherine Read to Mary-Anne, December 1845; Mrs Read's Diary, 1844-1850, MAR/HJW, MD 5702; 5695; 6043; 6045; 5694; 6042.
43. Ann Gilbert, 'For the Parents', MAR/HWJ, MD 6041.
44. With reductions if two or more children attended from same family. Ronald E. Wilson, 'The Story of Wincobank School and Chapel' (unpublished, 1955), MAR/HWJ, MD 6041.
45. Lizzie Rawson to MaryWilson, 17 August 1843,MAR/HWJ,MD5698. See: Joyce Goodman, 'Women and the Management of the Education of Working-Class Girls 1800-61' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1992); Meg Gomersall, 'Ideals and Realities: The Education of Working-Class Girls, 1800-1870', History of Education 17 (1988), pp. 37-53.
46. See Rawson, 'Memorials of James Montgomery' (JM/SU).
47. See Wincobank Total Abstinence Society, printed sheet, 1840; Elizabeth Rawson to Mary Eliza Wilson, 12 January 1838; 17 April 1841; 31 May 1842; 17 April 1843; 17 August 1843; 16 November 1843; 31 May 1844, 10 February 1848, 7 March 1848 and June 1848, MAR/HWJ, MD 5698. See also Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815-1872 (London: Faber & Faber, 1971).
48. In Norma Taylor, 'The Life of Mary-Anne Rawson' (unpublished BA dissertation, Sheffield University, 1972), p. 12.
49. Mary-Anne Rawson to Henry Joseph Wilson, 3 December 1845, MAR/HWJ, MD 6044.
50. Mosa Anderson, H. J.Wilson, Fighter for Freedom (London: James Clarke & Co., 1953);William Stewart Fowler, A Study in Radicalism and Dissent: The Life and Times of Henry Joseph Wilson 1833-1914 (London: Epworth Press, 1961). See also John Tosh, A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1999).
51. Rawson, 'Memorials of James Montgomery' (JM/SU).
52. John Holland and James Everett, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of James Montgomery, including Selections from his Correspondence, Remains in Prose and Verse, and Conversations on Various Subjects, 7 vols (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longman, 1854-56). This work was edited by both Holland and Everett, but was generally believed to be largely the work of Holland, a long-term acquaintance of Montgomery. See William Odom, Hallamshire Worthies: Characteristics and Work of Notable Sheffield Men and Women (Sheffield: J. W. Northend, 1926), pp. 9-12.
53. Rawson, 'Memorials of James Montgomery' (JM/SU). See also Eric David Mackerness, 'Mary-Anne Rawson and the Memorials of James Montgomery', Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society 8 (1962), pp. 218-28.
54. Rawson's uncle and father had provided bail following Montgomery's imprisonment in York Castle for 'libel' in 1796. See Mackerness, 'Mary-Anne Rawson and the Memorials of James Montgomery'.
55. Rawson, 'Memorials of James Montgomery' (JM/SU).
56. Rawson's use of this 'private' memoir both to contest current biographies and to highlight aspects of her own life is of interest in terms of women's strategies for self-representation and public writing. Despite indications in earlier drafts that she intended to publish the 'Memoirs', they remained unpublished. As a result, Mary-Anne Rawson failed to make public her belief in the profoundly social nature of the missionary family. See Helen Rogers, 'In the Name of the Father: Political Biographies by Radical Daughters', in David Amigoni (ed.), Life Writing and Victorian Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 202-27.
57. Ann Gilbert to Mary-Anne Rawson, 9 April 1838, MAR/HWJ, MD 2019.
58. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England, p. 5; for the suggestion that without philanthropy women would be 'idle', p. 224.
59. Joseph Gilbert (1779-1852), whom Ann Taylor married in December 1813, was pastor at Sheffield's Independent Nether Chapel and tutor at Rotherham College 1813-17. Ann's duties as a minister's wife in Sheffield, Hull (1817-25) and Nottingham (1825 until Joseph's death in 1852) were extensive. She assisted her husband with his correspondence each afternoon, as well as receiving guests and (at Sheffield) providing for a succession of young male boarders. Ann Taylor Gilbert, Biographical Sketch of the Rev. Joseph Gilbert. By his Widow. With Recollections of the Discourses of his Closing Years, From Notes at the Time, by One of his Sons (London: Jackson & Walford, 1853).
60. She wrote two poetry books with her sister Jane: Original Poems, for Infant Minds (1805), which included her most famous creations, 'Twinkle, Twinkle, little star' and 'My Mother'; Hymns for Infant Minds (London: T. Conder, 1810). See Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 453.
61. Josiah Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert (London: Henry S. King, 1874), p. 282.
62. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, pp. 185-8.
63. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, pp. 59, 297, 322.
64. Gilbert, Biographical Sketch, pp. 48, 55-6.
65. Ann Gilbert to Mary-Anne Rawson, 9 April 1838, MAR/HJW, MD 2019.
66. Gilbert, Biographical Sketch, pp. 55-6.
67. Ann Gilbert to Mary-Anne Rawson, 9 April 1838, MAR/HJW, MD 2019.
68. Gilbert, Biographical Sketch, pp. 55-6.
69. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, p. 185.
70. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, p. 185.
71. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, p. 188.
72. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, p. 188.
73. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, p. 188.
74. Christina Duff Stewart (ed.), Ann Taylor Gilbert's Album (New York and London: Garland, 1978), pp. 69, 125, 141, 269, 277, 549, 564, 568, 579, 609, 612.
75. In this she was influenced by her own mother's very energetic approach to writing. For Ann Martin Taylor, see Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 63-5.
76. Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 105, 157, 453.
77. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, pp. 295-6; letter to Jane, November 14th 1815, pp. 304-5.
78. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, p. 282.
79. In Ann and Jane Taylor, Hymns for Infant Minds (2nd edn, London: T. Conder, 1810), pp. 1-2.
80. See also 'The Privileges of Children in a Christian Land'; 'Thanks for a Year's Mercies', in Ann Taylor Gilbert, Original Anniversary Hymns, Adapted to the Public Services of Sunday Schools and Sunday School Unions (London: B. J. Holdsworth, 1827), pp. 3, 23; James Montgomery (ed.), The Chimney Sweepers' Album and Climbing Boy's Friend (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1824); William Ellis (ed.), The Missionary: Or, Christian's New Year's Gift (London: Seeley & Sons, 1832), pp. 275-6; Mary-Anne Rawson, The Bow in the Cloud (London: Jackson & Walford, 1832).
81. Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Select Remains of Mrs Gilbert, p. 78.
82. She organised the Nottingham anti-slavery petition, signed by 15,000 local women, and 5,000-plus men. Letter to Mary-Anne Rawson, 10 May 1833, quoted in Midgley, Women Against Slavery, p. 69. See also Gilbert (ed.), Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, p. 149. For the use of the language of domesticity in women's Anti-Corn Law activity, see S. J. Morgan, 'Domestic Economy and Political Agitation: Women and the Anti-Corn Law League, 1839-1846', in Gleadle and Richardson (eds), Women in British Politics, pp. 115-33.
83. See e.g., Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 182. Davidoff and Hall note that Ellis's publishers issued her Wives of England in a marriage-day edition bound in white morocco. p. 495, n. 147.
84. Stickney was raised as a Quaker before converting to Congregationalism upon her marriage to the exmissionaryWilliam Ellis in 1837. See Letter toWilliam Ellis from Mr Stickney, December 1836 in Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, Compiled by her Nieces (London: J. Nisbet & Co., 1893), pp. 65-6. See also Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 184.
85. For a challenge to the characterisation of Ellis as the purveyor of a subordinate role for women confined to a narrowly defined domestic sphere, see Henrietta Twycross-Martin, 'Woman Supportive or Woman Manipulative? The "Mrs Ellis" Woman', in Clarissa Campbell-Orr (ed.), Wollstonecraft's Daughters: Womanhood in England and France, 1780-1920 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 109-20.
86. Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 180-85; Twycross-Martin, 'Woman Supportive orWoman Manipulative?', pp. 109-20; A. James Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 75-8.
87. Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, pp. 95, 127-35.
88. See: Letter to M. C., 27 February 1832; letter to William Ellis, 11 December 1836, Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, pp. 47, 68.
89. Pringle (1789-1834), a Scotsman who started the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine (later Blackwood's Magazine) in 1817, had in 1820 emigrated with his extended family to southern Africa, where he remained until returning to London in 1826. Stickney had been introduced to Pringle and his wife by her friend, poet and writer Mary Sewell (1797-1884). She had presented African Sketches (1834), Pringle's account of his life in Southern Africa, to Rachel, her niece, on her seventeenth birthday. See letters to R. A., Sept 1834, Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, pp. 50-51, 54.
90. Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Negro Slave. A Tale. Addressed to the Women of Great Britain (London: Darton & Harvey, 1830).
91. Clare Midgley, Women Against Slavery; Diana Paton, 'Decency, Dependency and the Lash: Gender and the British Debate over Slave Emancipation, 1830-34', Slavery and Abolition 17 (1996), pp. 163-84.
92. 'The Young Hindoo. A Character from Real Life', in Ellis (ed.), The Missionary.
93. Sarah Stickney, 'TheYoung Hindoo', p. 151. See also: Letter to M. C., August 1829, in which she describes meeting one such Raphael Michael - 'the most amiable creature you can imagine, with such eyes! and such a countenance!' - at the home of her friend Deborah Clarkson, Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, p. 36.
94. Ellis, The Women of England, p. 1.
95. Ellis, The Women of England, pp. 30-31.
96. Ellis, The Women of England, pp. 56-7.
97. Ellis, The Wives of England, pp. 277-8. This is a rehearsal of an argument later made in Ellis, The Daughters of England.
98. Ellis, The Women of England, p. 59.
99. Ellis, The Women of England, p. 59
100. Ellis, The Wives of England, pp. 277-8.
101. William Ellis, Polynesian Researches During a Residence of Nearly Six Years in the South Sea Islands, 2 vols (London: Fisher, Son & Jackson, 1829);William Ellis, The History of the London Missionary Society (London: John Snow, 1844).
102. Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Island Queen: A Poem (London: John Snow, 1846), p. 162.
103. Sarah preferred instead to wait for the Marriage Act (1836) to come into effect (from July 1837) and persuaded Ellis to wait for the opportunity to marry in a nonconformist chapel; this concession on his part was reversed because of the need to bring forward the marriage on account of his LMS duties. Letter to M. C., 3 October 1837, Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, pp. 66, 81-3.
104. Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, 18 April 1837, pp. 75-6. Sarah further decided to keep her maiden name in her personal life.
105. Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, p. 90.
106. Letter from Sarah Ellis to her nieces, January 1838, Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, pp. 88-9.
107. Ellis made three trips to Madagascar in 1855, 1856-57 and 1861. Sarah stated that she could do more good by remaining at home. Letter to Rachel, 19 March 1853, Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, pp. 162-3.
108. Letter to her nieces, 12 December 1869; letters to Rachel, 25 November 1861, 5 November 1866, Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, pp. 213, 231, 241; Sarah Ellis, Madagascar: Its Social and Religious Progress (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1863).
109. Ellis, The Mothers of England, p. 353, quoted in Marianne Thormahlen, 'The Brontë Pseudonyms', English Studies (1994), .
110. Ellis, The Daughters of England, pp. 110, 112, quoted in Thormahlen, 'The Brontë Pseudonyms'.
111. Letters to her nieces, 7 December 1838, Home Life and Letters of Mrs Ellis, pp. 83, 94-5.
112. Edmund Read to Mary Eliza Wilson, 19 December 1843, MAR/HJW, MD 5697.
113. For the suggestion that 'evangelical religion was more important than feminism in enlarging women's sphere of action during the nineteenth century', see David Hempton and Myrtle Hill, 'Born to Serve: Women and Evangelical Religion', in Alan Hayes and Diane Urquhart (eds), The Irish Women's History Reader (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 119.