Julia Wedgwood, The Unexpected Victorian

‘This sparkling biography is as wide-ranging as its subject, a serious writer and niece of Charles Darwin who enjoyed friendships with luminaries from Elizabeth Gaskell (in whose home Wedgwood heard gossip about Charlotte Brontë), to Robert Browning, and – thanks to her long life – E. M. Forster. A fascinating life!’—Linda Hughes, Addie Levy Professor of Literature, Texas Christian University, USA

‘Susan Brown’s deeply researched and penetrating study corrects a historical erasure and brings to full prominence the multifaceted influence of Julia Wedgwood on 19th and early 20th century literature and thought. Skilfully interweaving a wide array of correspondents, collaborators and intellectual companions, Brown’s biography traces the enthralling history of a brilliant but stubbornly self-contained mind and reveals Wedgwood’s substantial contributions to Victorian literature, philosophy, science and theology. Thoughtful, moving and beautifully written, Julia Wedgwood: The Victorian Female Intellectual explores the ways in which Wedgwood’s uncompromising pursuit of the life of the mind and principled retreat from intimacy attracted and repelled the leading writers and thinkers of her day.’—Jane Susan Stabler, Professor, School of English, The University of St Andrews, UK

‘A compelling portrait of a remarkable, highly gifted Victorian woman and her contribution to nineteenth-century thought.’—Joanne Shattock, Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature, University of Leicester, UK

‘This is a beautifully written book about an important, yet neglected, Victorian intellectual that provides a new perspective on a number of central figures of the period. Julia Wedgwood was at the center of many of the important philosophical, social, religious, and literary movements of the era. A restless spirit, her broad intellectual interests and commitments brought her into contact with so many fascinating Victorians, including Browning (who interested her romantically), Darwin (who was her uncle), George Eliot, F. D. Maurice, R. H. Hutton, James Martineau, and many others. The author has a knack for analyzing Wedgwood’s relationships with these figures, probing both their intellectual ties and the personalities that could attract or repel. She also has an uncanny ability to examine, with a great deal of sensitivity, the dynamics of the family relationships within the Darwins and the Wedgwoods.’ — Bernard Lightman, Professor of Humanities, York University

‘This engaging biography brings to light a remarkable and forceful figure who has long required attention. Sue Brown’s study – detailed, immaculately researched and eloquently written – reveals the full range of Julia Wedgwood’s achievements and intriguingly situates her at the centre of a wide network of nineteenth-century writers, scientists, reformers and intellectuals. It is certainly hard to imagine this biography being surpassed.’ — Simon Avery, Reader in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Westminster University

Brown’s biography surveys Wedgwood’s influence and popularity as they developed across her lifetime and in the context of luminaries such as F. D. Maurice, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary, and George Boole, and Richard Hutton as well as prominent debates on suffrage, women’s education, vivisection, and the role of science within religion. Brown traces the complex shifts in Wedgwood’s thinking about each of these through close readings of her private letters, her letters to monthly periodicals, and her essays for a range of upmarket monthlies — Mercedes Sheldon, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Volume 55, Number 3&4, Fall/Winter 2022, pp. 472-474 (Article).