R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

Women Novelists of the 'Seventies 57of what actually passed in Mr Manning's mind is leftunsolved.It was still something of an event in literary annals solate as 1846 when, at the age of twenty, Mrs Craik fled toLondon from Stoke, 'conscious of a literary vocation'.' Women in her day', says Mrs Parr, ' were in intellectualimprisonment.' Even in the later 'fifties, and in spite ofthe enthusiastic encouragement of John Keble, whenCharlotte Yonge announced to her parents that she wasabout to publish a novel, a family council immediatelyfollowed, and its sanction to so daring a ' departure fromthe ladylike' was granted only on condition that Charlotteshould not herself profit by any financial reward thatmight come of it. She agreed; and a large part of her illgottengains enriched missionary work in Melanesia.Not that such little hindrances were confined to onesex, for even in the 'seventies we find Amelia Edwardsironically enquiring, ' Can a painter by any possibility bea gentleman? Might a gentleman without loss of dignity,write poetry, unless in Greek or Latin?' By that time,however, women's great challenge had been definitelyissued, though quality in the ranks was still more conspicuousthan numbers, and the battle was not yet to thestrong.Long before December 1869, for example, the tint ofthe bluestocking, it might be supposed, had to be verydark to justify the ascription of the term. None the lessin 1877 a novel of this title was published by Mrs AnnieEdwardes. Clementina Hardcastle, the bluestocking herself,had been brought up by her parents with no startlingoriginality. They hoped to see her well married, and wereconvinced that 'under-educated men desire over-educatedwives'. In consequence she writes to her longabsentlover a letter (beginning 'Dear Sir John'), whichis restricted to enquiries relating to the geology of the