Bessie Rayner Parkes Belloc (16 June 1829 - 23 March 1925) was one of the most prominent English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 feminists

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 and campaigners for women’s rights in Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 times and also a poet, essayist and journalist.

Early life

A great-grandchild of the eminent scientist and Unitarian

Unitarianism

Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....

 minister Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...

 (1733-1804), Bessie Rayner Parkes was born to loving, well-off parents, in a household interested in people and ideas. Her father was Joseph Parkes

Joseph Parkes

Joseph Parkes was an English political reformer.Born in Warwick, in Unitarian Whig circles, Parkes was educated at Warwick grammar school, Dr Charles Burney's college in Greenwich and Glasgow university. Moving to London in 1817, Parkes developed an association with the Philosophical Radicals...

 (1796-1865), a prosperous solicitor and a liberal with Radical

Radicalism (historical)

The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...

 sympathies. His support for his daughter’s aspirations was moderate. Bessie's mother, Elizabeth Rayner Priestley (1797-1877), usually called Eliza, was a wife and mother, who always considered herself an American, having been born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania

Northumberland County, Pennsylvania

There were 38,835 households out of which 27.30% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.40% were married couples living together, 9.60% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.10% were non-families. 30.20% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.50% had...

. She remembered her grandfather with admiration and love. Although not in great sympathy with her daughter over her strong wish to make changes in the status of women, she nevertheless loved her dearly and did not actively oppose her. Unusually for girls of her background, Bessie was well educated at a progressive Unitarian boarding school, a period of her life which she enjoyed.

Activism

Parkes became gradually aware of the unjust, contradictory, and even absurd situation of women in Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

, though there were many differences according to the social class they belonged to. The first endeavour that Parkes and her friend Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon

Barbara Bodichon

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was an English educationalist, artist, and a leading early nineteenth century feminist and activist for women's rights.-Early life:...

 took on was to try to change the restrictive property laws that applied to married women. Parkes was also indignant about the distinction made between "ladies" and "women". "Ladies", that is to say middle-class women, lost social status if they earned money, the only acceptable exceptions being writing, painting, or teaching, which for the most part meant governessing

Governess

A governess is a girl or woman employed to teach and train children in a private household. In contrast to a nanny or a babysitter, she concentrates on teaching children, not on meeting their physical needs...

. Due in part to her efforts, by the close of the century, it became acceptable for a middle-class woman to acquire a proper education and train to do paid work. Working-class women had always belonged to the work force, whether they wanted to or not. Parkes and her activist friends interacted with women in other countries of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, adding a very considerable international dimension to their efforts. In the 1860s Parkes belonged to the first women’s group which set out to obtain voting rights.

Friendships

Bessie Rayner Parkes’ wide circle of literary and political friends included George Eliot

George Eliot

Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...

, Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau was an English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist....

, Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...

, Robert Browning

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...

, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon

Barbara Bodichon

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was an English educationalist, artist, and a leading early nineteenth century feminist and activist for women's rights.-Early life:...

, Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female doctor in the United States and the first on the UK Medical Register...

, Lord Shaftesbury, Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....

, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

, Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...

, William Thackeray, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, LSA, MD , was an English physician and feminist, the first woman to gain a medical qualification in Britain and the first female mayor in England.-Early life:...

, John Ruskin

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...

, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...

. Her most fruitful friendship was with Barbara Bodichon, for out of their joint efforts grew the first organized women’s movement in Britain.

English Woman's Journal

Parkes became the principal editor of the first feminist British periodical – the English Woman’s Journal - published monthly in London between 1858 and 1864. Its closure was due both to financial reasons and to the conflicts that arose among its sponsors and chief contributors. The offshoots that sprang from it were many and varied, such as the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women, the Victoria Printing Press

Victoria Press

The Victoria Press was started by Emily Faithfull in London, in 1860.Faithfull was a member of The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. She was convinced that work as a compositor could be a well-suited trade for women seeking occupation . Faithfull learned type-setting...

 (entirely staffed by women), the Law-Copying Office, and the Langham Place Group, where women gathered informally to discuss their lives or simply have a rest.

Conversion to Roman Catholicism

Another important part of Parkes' life story was her slow but determined path to the Roman Catholic Church, to which she converted in 1864. She took in all the debate around the Oxford Movement

Oxford Movement

The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church Anglicans, eventually developing into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose members were often associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of lost Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy...

, but what really impressed her was the immense amount of social work carried out by Catholic nuns. She knew the three famous English Cardinals personally and recalled them in her writings.

Marriage and children

Aged 38, Bessie Rayner Parkes fell in love with a Frenchman of delicate health, named Louis Belloc, himself the son of a notable woman, Louise Swanton-Belloc. Their five-year long marriage, spent in France, was described by Parkes as Arcadia

Arcadia (utopia)

Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an...

. The family lived through the Franco-Prussian War

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

 and was deeply affected by it on a material level. Parkes never got over her husband’s sudden death in 1872. Their children, Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868-1947) and Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...

 (1870-1953), went on to become renowned writers in their different ways.

Later life

Parkes continued to write until late in life and remained a keen observer of politics and society. However, following her marriage and the death of her husband, her active involvement in the organized women’s movements abated. Anguish over the stupidity of war and pride in her country coloured her feelings during the First World War. Almost at its close, her eldest grandchild, a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force

Royal Air Force

The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

, went missing. He was shot down and killed near Cambrai

Cambrai

Cambrai is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department.Cambrai is the seat of an archdiocese whose jurisdiction was immense during the Middle Ages. The territory of the Bishopric of Cambrai, roughly coinciding with the shire of Brabant, included...

, in France.

Published work

Bessie Rayner Parkes published fourteen books: poetry, essays, biography, memoirs, travel, and literature for children and adolescents, as well as a very effective booklet on women’s rights and dozens of articles. A lot of her literary work was well received during her lifetime and her poetry was admired by Ruskin and Longfellow.

Books by Bessie Rayner Parkes

• Poems (London, John Chapman, 1st edition 1852, 2nd edition, 1855)
• Summer Sketches and Other Poems (London, John Chapman, 1854)
• Remarks on the Education of Girls, with Reference to the Social, Legal, and Industrial Position of Women in the Present Day (London, John Chapman, 1854, 1st unsigned edition, 3rd signed edition 1856).
• Gabriel: A Poem (London, John Chapman, 1856)
• The History of our Cat Aspasia (London, Bosworth and Harrison, 1856). Illustrated by Annie Leigh Smith.
• Ballads and Songs (London, Bell & Daldy, 1863)
• Essays on Woman’s Work (London, Alexander Strahan, 1865)
• Vignettes: Twelve Biographical Sketches (London and New York, Alexander Strahan, 1866)
• La Belle France (London, Dalby, Isbister & Co., 1877). Signed Bessie Parkes-Belloc.
• Peoples of the World (London, Paris & New York, Cassell Petter & Galpin, [1870]). Signed Bessie Parkes-Belloc.
• In a Walled Garden (London, Ward & Downey, 1st edition, 1895, 5th edition 1900). Signed Bessie Rayner Belloc.
• A Passing World (London, Ward & Downey, 1897). Signed Bessie Rayner Belloc.
• Historic Nuns (London, Duckworth, 1898). Signed Bessie R. Belloc.
• The Flowing Tide (London, Sands & Co., 1900). Signed Bessie Rayner Belloc.
• In Fifty Years (London, Sands & Co., 1904). Signed Bessie Rayner Belloc.

Further reading

• Anderson, Bonnie S. Joyous Greetings, The International Women’s Movement, 1830-1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

• Belloc Lowndes, Mrs. I, too, have lived in Arcadia (London: Macmillan, 1941).

• Fulmer, Constance M. “Bessie Rayner Parkes”. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 240: Late 19th Century and Early 20th Century British Women Poets (Detroit: Gale Group, 2001).

• Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

• Hirsch, Pam. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998).

• Lowndes, Emma. Turning Victorian Ladies into Women: The Life of Bessie Rayner Parkes, 1829-1925 (Palo Alto, CA: Academica Press, 2011).

• Lowndes, Susan, ed. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971).

• Rendall, Jane. "'A Moral Engine'? Feminism, Liberalism and the English Woman’s Journal", in Jane Rendall, ed., Equal or Different: Women’s Politics 1800-1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).

• ---. "Friendship and Politics: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-91) and Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829-1925)", in Susan Mendus & Jane Rendall, eds., Sexuality and Subordination (London: Routledge, 1989).

External links

• Profile and a selection of poems by Bessie Rayner Parkes on the UK Literary Heritage site
• Bessie Rayner Parkes @ Orlando Project (for subscribers only)
• Full text of Ballads and Songs (1863)
• Full text of In a Walled Garden (1895)
• Catalog description of personal papers of Bessie Rayner Parkes at Girton College Archive, Cambridge