This first full biography of Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1822-1877, tells how an extraordinary woman escaped from the constraints of Victorian domesticity to become the first woman in Whitehall and one of Britain's great social reformers. An ardent Christian Socialist radical, like her brother Thomas Hughes (author of Tom Brown's Schooldays), Jeanie Senior pioneered social work with Octavia Hill, co-founded the British Red Cross in the Franco-Prussian war and battled as 'Government Inspector' on behalf of exploited Workhouse girls. She was ferociously attacked for advocating the fostering of all pauper orphans rather than their incarceration and for indicting Workhouse 'Barrack' schools for producing prostitution fodder. Her fight to defend her findings against male hostility politicised her and she became an icon for the late 19th century women's movement. Jeanie Senior was also a significant figure in the worlds of art, music and literature, even being, it is argued here, the vital inspiration for her friend George Eliot in creating Dorothea, heroine of Middlemarch. Her life was a great 'human story' as she struggled in the teeth of multiple bereavement, an unhappy marriage and cancer in order to rescue others more desperate and vulnerable still. Florence Nightingale told her she had been 'a noble Army of one' and later grieved that her 'premature death was a national and irreparable loss'.

About the Author
Sybil Oldfield, Emeritus Reader in English, University of Sussex, is the author of Spinsters of This Parish; Women Against the Iron Fist, 19001989; The Collective Biography of Women in Britain 15501900; British Women Humanitarians 19001950; Afterwords Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf; and Jeanie, an Army of One' Mrs. Nassau Senior 18281877, the First Woman in Whitehall. She has also edited This Working-Day World Women's Lives and Cultures in Britain 191445.

Reviews
"The fascinating biography of a Victorian who should never have been forgotten. Both the poignant private life and the heroic public life of 'Mrs Nassau Senior' here find an ebullient, witty and passionate chronicler." -- Barbara Hardy, Professor Emeritus, University of London.
"This tender and engaging portrait of Jeanie Senior, champion of the workhouse girl, reveals not just that she was admired by the great and good of Victorian Britain, but that now we must count her as one of them." -- Seth Koven, Rutgers University.



Book Information
ISBN 9781845192549
Author Sybil Oldfield
Format Paperback
Page Count 348
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press
Weight(grams) 524g