Edith Simcox

Edith Jemima Simcox (21 August 1844 15 September 1901) was a British writer, trade union activist, and early feminist. She began her writing career as a reviewer, publishing criticism under the pseudonym "H. Lawrenny," including an important review of the Memoir of Jane Austen (1870).[1] In 1875 she and Emma Paterson became the first women to attend the Trades Union Congress as delegates. She lived at 60 Dean Street, London. From 1879-1882 she was a member of the London School Board representing Westminster.[2]

A lesbian, she had an admiring and passionate, yet physically unrequited relationship with the older George Eliot.[3] George Augustus Simcox and William Henry Simcox were her brothers.

Works

  • Natural Law: An Essay in Ethics (1877)
  • George Eliot. Her life and works (1881) article in the Nineteenth Century
  • Episodes in the Lives of Men, Women and Lovers (1882) fiction
  • The Capacity of Women (1887) article in the Nineteenth Century
  • Primitive Civilizations: or Outlines of the History of Ownership in Archaic Communities (1894)
  • A Monument to the Memory of George Eliot: Edith J. Simcox's Autobiography of a Shirtmaker (1998) autobiography, edited by Constance M. Fulmer and Margaret E. Barfield

References

  1. Looser, Devoney (2017). The Making of Jane Austen. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 148. ISBN 1421422824.
  2. "London School Board Elections". Daily News. 29 November 1879.
  3. Bodenheimer, Rosemarie (1994), The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans: George Eliot, Her Letters and Fiction, Cornell University Press, ISBN 0-8014-8184-8

Further reading

  • K. A. McKenzie (1961) Edith Simcox and George Eliot
  • Rosemarie Bodenheimer, 'Autobiography in Fragments: The Elusive Life of Edith Simcox', Victorian Studies 44 (Spring 2002): 399-422
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