WOMEN AND VICTORIAN VALUES, 1837-1910
Advice Books, Manuals and Journals for Women

Part 4: Sources from the Bodleian Library, Oxford

The Women’s Library (1903), edited by Ethel Mckenna, provides a series of investigations by women authors into women’s work (Teaching, painting, journalism, medicine and the theatre) as well as much concrete advice on the home and garden.

Womanhood (1899-1907), edited by Ada Ballin, has much on "the progress of women" and is an important resource for women’s art. Women’s Work in the great harvest field (1874-1884) covers women’s missionary work on behalf of numerous organisations in places ranging from Egypt and India, to the London Poor and widows in Spitalfield.

Women’s Health and Beauty (1902-1908) proclaims that "Health is Beauty, Ugliness is Sin" and lays the foundations for feelings of guilt and inadequacy in its readers.

Women & Victorian Values provides the sources that will enable students and scholars alike to explore the established roles and patterns of authority in the home and workplace, making it a vital source for both women's studies and gender studies.

It also provides rich evidence for the study of women’s education, travel, notions of beauty and taste, gentility, domesticity, and consumerism.