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This book examines Mary Ward's distinctive insight into late-Victorian and Edwardian society as a famous writer and reformer, who was inspired by the philosopher and British idealist, Thomas Hill Green. As a talented woman who had studied among Oxford University intellectuals in the 1870s, and the granddaughter of Dr Arnold of Rugby, Mrs Humphry Ward (as she was best known) was in a unique position to participate in the debates, issues and events that shaped her generation; religious doubt and Christianity, educational reforms, socialism, women's suffrage and the First World War. Helen Loader examines a range of biographical sources, alongside Mary Ward's writings and social reform activities, to demonstrate how she expressed and engaged with Greenian idealism, both in theory and practice, and made a significant contribution to British Society.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I Religion .- Chapter 2: Religion, Women's Education and Oxford.- Chapter 3: T. H. Green - Christianity and Moral Philosophy.- Chapter 4: Mary Ward - Writing, Doubt and Christian Religion.- Chapter 5: Mary Ward - Christian Citizen and Social Reformer.- Part II Society.- Chapter 6: Family, Fame and London Society.- Chapter 7: T. H. Green - Marriage, the Family Unit and Society.- Chapter 8: Mary Ward - Fiction, Divorce and Inequality.- Chapter 9: Mary Ward - Educational Visions and the Bloomsbury Community.- Part III Politics.- Chapter 10: Liberal Politics, Women and the Public Sphere.- Chapter 11: T. H. Green - Political Theory and Liberalism.- Chapter 12: Mary Ward - Socialism and State Intervention.- Chapter 13: Mary Ward - Women and Political Action.- Chapter 14: Conclusion.- Appendix 1 - Family Tree of Mary Ward.- Appendix 2 - List of Historical People who feature in the Lives of Mary Ward and T. H. Green.- Appendix 3 - Mary Ward's Main Works (Fiction and Non-fiction), Arranged Thematically.- Appendix 4 Mary Ward's Main Educational Reform Activity Time Line.- Appendix 5 - Notable Dates in the Life of Mary Ward.
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"This book's approach is undoubtedly original and eminently worth reading as both a way into the writing (and later life) of a remarkable woman and also a moving expression of Greenian idealism, its original nineteenth-century reception and its outcomes, as well as a coherent analysis of Ward with honesty and post-feminist critical balance for the contemporary reader." (Gillian Boughton, Modern Believing, Vol. 64 (4), 2023)
