The Pioneers of Women

In the course of writing Rebels, the author noted down many unfamiliar names. Some of this was ignorance, but much was due to the lack of recognition, the later revision of history, the absence of evidence. Their list eventually grew to this Section. None of these are unknown, just never collated in this form, in this quantity. It is intended that the Listing provides moral balance within the confines of this book, and that it will be made available as a public domain resource. It is also a mosaic of history, the biographical fragments telling of the challenges, and the opportunities.

Despite formidable barriers, a few British women made a difference for their gender before the late nineteenth-century, although they often received little recognition in their lifetimes. The mere fact of women emerging from the ‘private sphere’ into public life was itself a provocation. The Biographical Chronology gives brief details of over 300 women, dying after 1800, but born in Britain before 1840 [a few exceptions to these dates], are listed by order of birth. Where known by their married name, their maiden name is often given in brackets (if not in the text).

Not all of those listed publicly rebelled against the established order, but this distinction seems trivial compared to the challenges women faced in having their voice heard at all. Most – with very rare exceptions – were sufficiently privileged to have received an education of sorts. A few were from the elite, who had been gifted the luxury of choice. Some worked for a living, at a time when this was almost impossible; others were supported in their mission by their husbands. Many were wives and/or daughters of the clergy, especially the Unitarian and Evangelical branches, or came from non-Conformist religions such as the Quakers, who allowed women an equal voice. Some devoted their lives to improving the lot of their sisters.

Almost all these pioneers have entries (and pictures) in Wikipedia, and readers are encouraged to explore their lives further. In general, their contribution has been eclipsed by later generations active in the twentieth-century suffrage campaign [see Spartacus Educational online], who stood on their sisters’ shoulders.

The voices of women of the Poor, few of whom could read and even fewer write, were never recorded.

The Recognition of Pioneers

After 1840, the names become much better known: the efforts of their sisters enabled educational and career opportunities; the suffrage movement provided a platform for dissent. The Memorial to Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett in Parliament Square names 55 women, only seven from this listing (Becker, Cobbe, Craigen, Elmy, Haslam, McLaren, Pochin). There should have been at least fourteen more from this period, their names carefully detailed in Dame Millicent’s autobiography, What I Remember (1924):

Education: Emily Davies, Maria Grey, Mary Gurney

Morals: Josephine Butler, Elizabeth Blackwell

Professional: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Jessie Boucheret

Suffrage: Clementia Taylor, Caroline Ashurst Biggs, Barbara Bodichon, Ursula Bright, Jane Strachey, Flora Stevenson, Rosamund Davenport-Hill.

The author would argue for another two names on the Memorial: Rhoda Garrett (see 1872, died young, MGF said “a speaker of extraordinary power and eloquence”); and, Emily Faithfull (suffered moral disapproval).

The early pioneers have been forgotten, then ignored.

They deserve better.

A Biographical Chronology of Pioneers

Queen Victoria (1819–1901) has been disqualified from this listing, as her position was widely believed to have been obtained through Divine Right. However, it is difficult to see that even such limited progress as was made during her reign would have been achieved under a male Monarch. Her fourth daughter, Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll (1848–1939), was a strong advocate of feminism, corresponding with Josephine Butler and visiting Elizabeth Garrett.

Queen Caroline (1768–1821) was the wronged wife of George IV, a popular figurehead for dissent and political reform.

–§–

Elizabeth Carter (1717–1806) was a poet, classicist, writer, translator, linguist, and polymath.

Elizabeth (Robinson) Montagu (1718–1800) was a social reformer, patron of the arts, salonnière, literary critic and writer, who helped to organize and lead the Blue Stockings Society. She devoted her husband’s fortune to fostering English and Scottish literature, and to the relief of the poor.

Fanny (Glanville) Boscawen (1719–1805) was a literary hostess.

Elizabeth (Reynolds) Johnson (1721–1800) was the sister of the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, the author Mary Palmer (1716–1794), and the painter Frances Reynolds (1729–1807). She wrote anonymous religious pamphlets, optimistically submitting The Astronomy and Geography of the Created World (1786) for the Longitude prize. Jane Squire (1686–1743) was the only other female proposer.

Hester (Mulso) Chapone (1727–1801) was a writer of conduct books for women. They offered their readers a description most often of the ideal woman, while at the same time handing out practical advice. Not only did they dictate morality, but they guided readers' choice of dress and outlined what was seen in that period as proper etiquette.

Clara Reeve (1729–1807) was a novelist best known for the Gothic novel The Old English Baron (1777), and a history of prose fiction The Progress of Romance (1785).

Charlotte (Ramsay) Lennox (~1730–1804), was a Scottish author and poet, the anonymous author of The Female Quixote (1752), and an associate of Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, and Samuel Richardson.

Frances "Fanny" Abington (1737–1815) was an actress, best known for her sense of fashion. She began her career as a flower girl and a street singer.

Mary (Bosanquet) Fletcher (1739–1815) was a popular Methodist preacher, with her friend and fellow preacher Sarah Crosby (1729–1804), credited with persuading John Wesley to allow women to preach in public.

Hester Lynch (Salusbury) Thrale, Mrs Piozzi (1741–1821) was a Welsh-born diarist, author, and patron of the arts. Her diaries and correspondence are an important source of information about Samuel Johnson and eighteenth-century English life.

Sarah (Kirby) Trimmer (1741–1810) was a writer and critic of children's literature, as well as an educational reformer, founding schools in her parish.

Angelica Kauffmann RA (1741–1807) was a skilled portraitist, landscape, and decoration painter, one of the two female founding members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768. [Swiss, exception to rule]

Anna Seward (1742–1809) was a Romantic poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield, engaging with a wide literary and scientific circle.

Anne (Home) Hunter (1742–1821) was a salonnière and poet in Georgian London, remembered for writing the English texts to at least nine of Joseph Haydn's songs.

Anna Laetitia (Aikin) Barbauld (1743–1825) was a prominent poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children's literature.

Hannah (Parkhouse) Cowley (1743–1809) was a dramatist and poet.

Hannah More (1745–1833) worked with her sisters at a boarding school they established in Bristol. She was known for her moral writings and for encouraging women to join the anti-slavery movement.

Mary Ann Radcliffe (1746– 1818) was the author of The Female Advocate.

Anne Seymour (Conway) Damer (1748–1828) was an aristocratic sculptor. She later lived with the author Mary Berry.

Charlotte Turner Smith (1749–1806) was a poet and Gothic novelist.

Caroline Herschel (1750–1848) was born in Germany, but moved to England with her brother, the astronomer William Herschel, in 1772. Caroline joined her brother when he was appointed royal astronomer at the court at Windsor and served as his scientific assistant at £50 a year, the first salary that a woman had ever received for scientific work.

Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1750–1830) was a religious author and literary expurgator. She helped her brother Thomas edit The Family Shakespeare (1807), removing anything deemed irreverent or immoral (about 10%). This might be sneered at today, but allowed the Bard to reach a younger audience.

Mary Edwards (~1750–1815) and her daughter Eliza (1779–1846) were human computers, working for the British Nautical Almanac, calculating the position of the sun, moon, and planets for navigation at sea.

Sophia Lee (1750–1824) combated her family's poverty by devoting the profits of her successful opera The Chapter of Accidents (1780) to the foundation of a school for young ladies at Belvedere House, Bath, where she and her sisters could teach.

Isabella (Robinson) Beetham (1750–1825) was a silhouette artist.

Frances (Burney) d’Arblay (1752–1840) was a satirical novelist, diarist, and playwright, remembered for Evelina (1778).

Elizabeth (Simpson) Inchbald (1753–1821) was a novelist, dramatist, and actress who left her parents' home to seek her fortune at eighteen. After her husband's death, she successfully earned her living as a playwright, composing original material and translating from French.

Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) was a Welsh-born actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century.

Ann Jane (Hamill) Carlile (1755–1864) was a pioneer of temperance, setting up the Band of Hope in Leeds in 1847.

Elizabeth Hamilton (1756–1816) was a Scottish essayist, poet, satirist, and novelist.

Mary (Darby) Robinson (1757–1800) was an actress, poet, dramatist, novelist, and scandalous celebrity figure. She was known as the English Sappho for her poetry, and as Perdita for her acting. Her Lyrical Tales (1800) are a strong defence of feminism.

Jane (Arden) Gardiner (1758–1840) was a schoolmistress and grammarian, opening a boarding school for girls in Beverley in 1784, and a close friend of:

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was a writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), she responded to those educational and political theorists of the 18th century who did not believe women should receive a rational education. She argued that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than mere wives, deserving equal rights. [exception to 1800 rule]

Mary Hays (1759–1843) was a self-taught intellectual who published essays, poetry, novels, and works on famous (and infamous) women. She maintained close relations with dissenting and radical thinkers of her time. Female Biography (1803) celebrated the lives of 300 women [too early for this list].

Elizabeth Farren (~1759–1829) was an Irish actress, famed for Shakespearean roles, later marrying into the elite.

Margaret Bryan (~1760–~1816) was a schoolmistress in Blackheath, publishing scientific textbooks on Astronomy and Philosophy.

Elizabeth Fulhame (dates unknown?) was a Scottish chemist, known for the invention of the concept of catalysis in An Essay on Combustion (1794), and for the discovery of photo-reduction.

Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) was a Scottish poet and dramatist, exhibiting an interest in moral philosophy and the Gothic.

Lilias Graham (1762–1836) was an heiress and social activist, setting up the first temperance movement in Scotland.

Mary Berry (1763–1852) was a writer, best known for her letters and journals, living with Anne Damer.

Emma (Lyon), Lady Hamilton (1765–1815) was a model and actress, a muse of George Romney, and the mistress of Horatio Nelson.

Lady Anne Hamilton (1766–1846) was Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Caroline, her papers the basis for a radical history of the late Georgian era in Authentic Records of the Court of England (1832). A forgotten Rebel.

Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was the first realist writer in children's literature, a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe. She held advanced views, for a woman of her time, on estate management, politics, and education, and corresponded with some of the leading literary and economic writers, including Sir Walter Scott and David Ricardo.

Amelia (Rogers) Griffiths (1768–1858) was a beachcomber and amateur phycologist (collector of algae) in Torquay, supplying Mary Wyatt’s shop.

Ellen (Wallace) Sharples (1769–1849) painted portraits in pastel and watercolour miniatures on ivory. Her daughter Rolinda Sharples (1793–1838) was also an artist, painting scenes of Regency Bristol.

Jane (Haldimand) Marcet (1769–1858) ran a salon with her husband in London, attracting many scientific and literary figures. She wrote widely-praised books popularizing science and economics, notably her Conversations on Chemistry (1805) and Political Economy (1816).

Amelia (Alderson) Opie (1769–1853) wrote numerous novels, best-known for Adeline Mowbray (1804). She was also a leading abolitionist, the first of 187,000 names in women’s 1833 anti-slavery petition.

Elizabeth (Coltman) Heyrick (1769–1831) became a Quaker, campaigning against the slave trade. She believed that women should be involved in these issues as they are particularly qualified to "not only to sympathize with suffering, but also to plead for the oppressed.”

Barbara (Wreakes) Hofland (1770–1844) was a writer of moral stories for children, and of schoolbooks and poetry.

Sarah Harriet Burney (1772–1844) was a novelist, best-known for Clarentine (1796), overshadowed by her sister Fanny.

Olivia (Wilmot) Serres (1772–1834) was a fraudress, claiming Royal descent, an artist, and an author, editing the Secret History of the Court of England (1832).

Charlotte (King) Dacre, (1772–1825) was an author of Gothic novels, remembered for Zofloya (1806). Her style was more like that of the male authors of her era, creating aggressive and often physically violent female characters who demonstrate powerful sexual desires and ambition.

Margaret (King), Lady Mount Cashell (1773–1835) was an Irish writer and traveller, inspired by her governess, Mary Wollstonecraft, to republican sympathies. She eloped from her family, studied medicine in Italy disguised as a man, and settled in Pisa, where she welcomed Mary Shelley.

Frances Arabella Rowden, Countess St. Quentin (1774–1840?) was an engaging teacher at a school in Hans Place, London, with a “knack of making poetesses of her pupils” [several in this list, notably Mary Mitford, Mrs. Hall, Lady Caroline Lamb and LEL] and an enthusiasm for the theatre.

Charlotte Susan Maria (Campbell), Lady Bury (1775–1861) was a novelist, chiefly remembered in connection with the anonymous Diary illustrative of the Times of George IV (1838).

Mary Martha (Butt) Sherwood (1775–1851) ran a boarding school with her husband, writing many evangelical works for children.

Anne Jane Carlile (1775–1864) was an Irish temperance pioneer and philanthropist.

Catherine Andras (1775–1860) was an artist of wax portraits and models.

Jane Austen (1775–1817) published Sense and Sensibility (1811) anonymously, as writing was thought to degrade femininity. Her father was a relatively poor clergyman, but her brother inherited wealth. Her works were republished in her own name in 1833, her nephew wrote A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869, her fame only arriving in the 1880’s.

Mary Anne Knight (1776–1851) painted miniatures, especially of children.

Matilda Betham (1776–1852) was a diarist, poet, woman of letters, and miniature portrait painter. She researched notable historical women around the world [no overlap with this list] for A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).

Lady Hester Stanhope (1776–1839) was a hostess for her unmarried uncle, Prime Minister William Pitt. After 1810 she travelled to the Middle East, carrying out an archaeological excavation of the ruins of Ashkelon.

Etheldred Benett (1776–1845) was an early geologist in Wiltshire, collecting and studying fossils.

Frances (Milton) Trollope (1779–1863) was a novelist and writer, also publishing social novels: one against slavery, the first industrial novel, and two anti-Catholic novels. She was the mother of Anthony Trollope.

Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845) was a Quaker prison reformer, promoting rehabilitation rather than punishment. Her Gurney family were wealthy bankers. She improved the conditions of prisoners sent for transportation, eventually leading to the gradual abolition of this punishment from 1837.

Mary Fairfax Somerville (1780–1872) was a Scottish science writer and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as Caroline Herschel. Her obituary declared:

Whatever difficulty we might experience in the middle of the nineteenth century in choosing a king of science, there could be no question whatever as to the queen of science.

Lucy Aikin (1781–1864), from a Unitarian family, was an historical writer, biographer, and correspondent.

Lucy (Jesse) Townsend (1781–1847) was an abolitionist, starting the first Ladies' Anti-slavery Society in Birmingham in 1825.

Sydney (Owenson), Lady Morgan (1781–1859) was an Irish novelist, best known as the author of The Wild Irish Girl.

Mary Anne (Symonds) Whitby (1784–1850) was an authority on the cultivation of silkworms, corresponding with Charles Darwin.

Louise Lehzen (1784–1870) was governess/companion to Queen Victoria.

Sarah (Biffen) Wright (1784–1850) was born with no arms or legs, only 37” tall. She started life as a fairground attraction, before learning to paint, sew and write using her mouth. Her landscapes and miniatures were highly praised, some commissioned by the Royal Family, awarded a pension by Queen Victoria. Philip Mould celebrated her work in 2022.

Caroline Ponsonby, Lady Lamb (1785–1828) was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and novelist, best known for her work Glenarvon, a Gothic novel, and for her affair with Lord Byron.

Anna Doyle Wheeler (1785–1848) was an advocate of political rights for women and the benefits of contraception, speaking at the South Place Chapel. Her daughter was the author Rosina Bulwer Lytton (1802–1882).

Anne Knight (1786–1862) was a social reformer, abolitionist, and pioneer of feminism from a Quaker family. She attended the 1840 anti-slavery convention, where the need to improve women's rights became obvious. In 1847 Knight produced the first leaflet for women's suffrage, forming the first British women's suffrage organisation in Sheffield in 1851.

Mary Ann Venning (1786–1849) taught in a school in Brixton, and was a popular children’s science writer. [Author’s research]

Harriette (Dubochet) Wilson (1786–1845) was the daughter of a Mayfair watchmaker. She is listed not as a courtesan, but for her spirited invention of the kiss-and-tell genre in her Memoirs (1825). These were praised for their authenticity by Sir Walter Scott, starting with the infamous line:

I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of 15, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.

Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855) was an author and dramatist, her writings celebrated for their spontaneous humour, combined with quick wit and literary skill. She was a pupil of Frances Rowden at Hans Place.

Mary Prince (1788–~1833) was born a slave in Bermuda. She campaigned against slavery, presenting an anti-slavery petition to Parliament.

Marguerite (Power) Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789–1849), was an Irish novelist, journalist, and literary hostess.

Mary (Pritchard) Fildes (1789–1876) was a political activist and an early suffragette. She was wounded at the Peterloo massacre in 1819, and became President of the Manchester Female Reform Society.

Margaret Ann Bulkley (1789–1865) was born female in Ireland. As Dr. James Barry, he was a military surgeon in the British Army, becoming Inspector General, improving conditions for wounded soldiers and native inhabitants overseas.

Elizabeth Jesser Reid (1789–1866) was a pioneering social reformer, the daughter of a wealthy Unitarian ironmonger. She founded Bedford College, the first women’s higher education institution in 1849. She devoted her life to supporting many benevolent schemes set up by women, as well as anti-slavery campaigns in America.

Anna (Kempe) Bray (1790–1883) was a historical novelist, specializing in the traditions of Devon and Cornwall.

Mary Diana Dods (1790–1830) was a writer of books, short stories, and other works under the pseudonym of David Lyndsay. She dressed as a man, Walter Sholto Douglas, and ‘married’ Isabella Robinson, a friend of Mary Shelley.

Mrs John Beaumont (1790–1853?) was an early slavery abolitionist [a disgrace that her details are not better recorded].

Charlotte Elizabeth (Browne) Tonna (1790–1846) was a popular novelist, inspired by religion, promoting women’s rights in works such as Helen Fleetwood: A Tale of the Factories (1841) and The Wrongs of Women (1843).

Sarah Martin (1791–1843) was a prison visitor and philanthropist. She earned her living by dressmaking, and devoted much of her time amongst criminals in the Tolhouse Gaol in Great Yarmouth.

Harriet (Lewin) Grote (1792–1879) was a biographer and hostess, and co–founded the Society of Female Artists in 1855 with Jenny Lind. A suffrage pioneer, speaking at the 1870 Hanover Square Meeting.

Anne Lister (1791–1840) was an English diarist, famous for revelations for which she was dubbed ‘the first modern lesbian’.

Annabella (Milbanke), Baroness Wentworth and Baroness Byron (1792–1860), was the wife of Lord Byron. A precocious child, she was tutored by a former Cambridge University professor, William Frend, in classical literature, philosophy, science, and mathematics. A strictly religious woman, she seemed an unlikely match for the amoral and agnostic poet, and their marriage soon ended in acrimony, leaving a gifted daughter (Ada Lovelace).

Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793–1835) was a poet, whose works often included themes of women taking their own lives to escape victimisation.

Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1793–1872) painted portraits in the manner of Sir Thomas Lawrence. She was a close friend of Richard Parkes Bonington.

Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) was the first Anglo-Irish art historian. She became a well-known writer and contributor to nineteenth-century thought on a range of subjects including early feminism, art history, travel, Shakespeare, poets, and German culture.

Emma Roberts (1794–1840) was a travel writer and poet known for her memoirs about India. She was a room-mate of LEL at Hans Place.

Anna Gurney (1795–1857) was a scholar specializing in Old English, and an anti-slavery campaigner.

Hannah Lawrance (1795–1875) was a historian, author and novelist from a Congregationalist family, her works including The History of Woman in England, and her Influence on Society and Literature (1843).

Mary Hornchurch Lloyd (1795–1865) was a joint secretary of the first Ladies Anti-slavery Society.

Sophia (Ford) Chichester (1795–1847) and her sister Georgina Fletcher Welch (1792–1879) were wealthy patrons of radical causes, funding reformers including Robert Owen and Richard Carlile.

Eliza Maria (Campbell), Lady Gordon-Cumming (1795–1842) was a palaeontologist and geologist, the daughter of Lady Bury. She collected fish fossils, sending fine illustrations to many other noted geologists.

Sophia Sturge (1795–1845) started the Female Society for Birmingham in 1825, campaigning against slavery.

Agnes Strickland (1796–1874) was a historical writer and poet, helped in her biographies of female subjects by her sister Elizabeth (1794–1875).

Emily Eden (1797–1869) was a poet and novelist who gave witty accounts of English life in the early nineteenth-century.

Louisa (Simeon) Place (1797–1866) was an actress, later marrying the reformer, Francis Place.

Katherine (Byerley) Thomson (1797–1862) was a novelist and historian.

Lucia Elizabeth (Bartolozzi) Vestris (1797–1856) was an actress and opera singer, more notable as a theatre producer and manager.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin, and the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. She married the radical poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816, writing Frankenstein (1818) with his encouragement.

Catherine (Moody) Gore (1798–1861) was a prolific novelist and dramatist, described in her obituary as “the best novel writer of her class and the wittiest woman of her age."

Eliza Acton (1799–1859) wrote Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), one of first cookery books aimed at middle-class families.

Mary Anning (1799–1847) was an exception to the education rule, and an early British fossil collector in Lyme Regis. Her gender and social class prevented her from fully participating as a palaeontologist in the scientific community of early nineteenth-century Britain, and she did not always receive full credit for her contributions.

Mary (Botham) Howitt (1799–1888) was a poet, from a Quaker family, and author of the poem The Spider and the Fly.

Anna Atkins (1799–1871) was an English botanist and photographer. She was educated by her father, John George Children, a respected scientist. She is considered the first person to publish books illustrated with photographic images, many in collaboration with Anne Dixon (1799–1877).

Anna Maria Fielding, Mrs S.C. Hall (1800–1881) was an Irish novelist. She worked for the temperance cause, for women's rights, and for the friendless and fallen.

Maria Jane (Jewsbury) Fletcher (1800–1833) was a writer, poet, and reviewer, best known for The Three Histories (1830). LEL said of her:

I never met with any woman who possessed her powers of conversation. If her language had a fault, it was its extreme perfection. It was like reading an eloquent book, full of thought and poetry. She died too soon…

Lily Maxwell (~1800–1876) was a suffragist who was said to be the first woman to vote in 1867, after her name was included on the electoral roll in error, and her vote was later disallowed.

Jane (Smeal) Wigham (1801–1888) was a leading Scottish abolitionist, and the stepmother of Eliza Wigham.

Mary Anne Rawson (1801–1887) was an abolitionist. She was a campaigner with the Tract Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, for Italian nationalism, against child labour, but above all anti-slavery.

Jane (Welsh) Carlyle (1801–1866) was a Scottish writer, the wife of essayist Thomas Carlyle, best-known for her letters to Geraldine Jewsbury.

Sara Coleridge (1802–1852) was an author, daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, best known for Phantasmion, a Fairy Tale (1837).

Mary Hennell (1802–1843) was a reforming writer from a Unitarian family, writing an essay on Social Systems.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) was a much-admired poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. Lucasta Miller (2019) explored her tragic personal life.

Augusta (Waddington) Hall, Baroness Llanover (1802–1896) was best known as a patron of the Welsh arts and a temperance campaigner.

Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) is considered the first modern female sociologist. Her father was a textile manufacturer and Unitarian deacon in Norwich, but his business failed in 1829, and Harriet supported herself by writing on many subjects, including economics. She was a good friend of Charles and Erasmus Darwin through their Unitarian connections, and travelled to America. Her comments on the state of women’s education in 1837 were boldly feminist:

The intellect of women is confined by an unjustifiable restriction of education. As women have none of the objects in life for which an enlarged education is considered requisite, the education is not given. The choice is to either be ill–educated, passive, and subservient, or well–educated, vigorous, and free only upon sufferance.

Maria Theresa (Villers) Lister, Mrs Lewis (1803–1865) was a writer and biographer.

Catherine Ann (Stevens) Crowe (1803–1876) was a novelist, story writer and playwright, who also wrote for children.

Charlotte (Solly) Manning (1803–1871) was a feminist, scholar, and writer. She was the first head of Girton College.

Theodosia Blacker, Lady Monson (1803–1891) was a promoter of women's rights, horsewoman, atheist, and landscape painter. She equipped the offices at 19 Langham Place, and was the last companion of Matilda Hays.

Eliza Sharples (1803–1852) cast aside her Methodist education in 1829, becoming the partner of the atheist and radical Richard Carlile. She lectured as Isis, the Lady of the Rotunda on political reform and women’s rights, publishing a weekly journal.

Mary Seacole (1805–1881) was a business woman and nurse who set up the ‘British Hotel’ behind the lines during the Crimean War. Her Scottish father was a Lieutenant in the Army, and her Jamaican mother a traditional healer. Her work was over-shadowed by that of Florence Nightingale, and she was largely forgotten until the late twentieth-century.

Elizabeth (Barrett) Browning (1806–1861) was one of the most prominent poets of her day after the publication of Poems (1844). Her Barrett family wealth derived from plantations in Jamaica; she married the poet Robert Browning in 1846. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery and helped reform child labour laws.

Elizabeth (Merrington) Tredgold (1806–1892) was active in the Anti-slavery Society, where her husband was Secretary.

Anna (Beresford), Lady Thynne (1806–1866) was a marine zoologist, building the first stable marine aquarium.

Margaret (Thomson) Mylne (1806–1892) was an early Scottish suffragette, writing an 1841 article in the Westminster Review, arguing for suffrage.

Harriet (Hardy) Taylor Mill (1807–1858) was active in radical circles, her second husband John Stuart Mill. On her death, he wrote:

Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom.

Mary Carpenter (1807–1877) was an educational and social reformer in Bristol. The daughter of a Unitarian minister, she founded a ragged school and reformatories for poor children and young offenders.

Henrietta Maria, Baroness Stanley (1807–1895), was a Canadian-born political hostess and campaigner for the education of women, helping found Girton College. Her daughters included Maude Stanley, Katherine Russell (Lady Amberley), and Rosalind Howard.

Elizabeth (Pease) Nichol (1807–1897) was an abolitionist, anti-segregationist, woman suffragist, chartist, and anti-vivisectionist.

Jane Digby (1807–1881) was an aristocratic adventuress and traveller, married four times, divorced from Lord Ellenborough, dying in Damascus.

Caroline (Sheridan) Norton (1808–1877) came from a grand but impoverished family, entering into an unhappy marriage with the M.P. George Norton. Her intense campaigns over child custody and the conditions of divorce influenced the passing of the Custody of Infants Act in 1839, the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1857, and led to the Married Women’s Property Act in 1870.

Clara Lucas Balfour (1808–1878) was a temperance campaigner and author.

Caroline (Jones) Chisholm (1808–1877) was known as the ‘Emigrants’ Friend’ for her support of female and family welfare in Australia.

Anna Letitia (Aikin) Le Breton (1808–1886) was an author from a Unitarian family, a niece of Anna Barbauld.

Frances Anne “Fanny” Kemble (1809–1893) was an actress from a theatre family. She was a popular writer, whose published works included plays, poetry, eleven volumes of memoirs, travel writing, and an Abolitionist memoir about her time on her husband’s slave plantation in Georgia.

Priscilla Buxton (1808–1852) was an abolitionist, co-secretary of the London Female Anti-Slavery Society, the second name on the 1833 petition.

Elizabeth (Rigby), Lady Eastlake (1809–1893) was a British author, art critic and art historian, and was the first woman to write regularly for the Quarterly Review. She is known for her writing but also for supporting her husband, Sir Charles Eastlake, as director of the National Gallery.

Mary (Novello) Cowden Clarke (1809–1898) was an author, best remembered for her Complete Concordance to Shakespeare (1845).

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) started writing as ‘A Lady’ in 1840, before publishing Mary Barton under her married name in 1848. She was the daughter of a Unitarian minister, William Stevenson, brought up by an aunt in Knutsford (later immortalized in Cranford). She married a Unitarian minister William Gaskell in 1832, moving to industrial Manchester. She was a popular and respected novelist, with many of her works serialized in weekly magazines. Her reputation has revived through greater recognition of her depictions of class and gender issues, and social conflict.

Ernestine (Potowska) Rose (1810–1892) was a suffragist, abolitionist, and freethinker, known as the ‘first Jewish feminist’. [Exception, born in Poland, US citizen, buried in London]

Clementia (Doughty) Taylor (1810–1908) was a women's rights activist and radical. Her salon and library at Aubrey House in London were a centre of feminist ideas from 1863.

Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury (1812–1880) was a novelist, book reviewer and literary figure in London, brought up by her sister Maria. Her writings reflect her romantic feelings for Jane Carlyle.

Camilla Dufour (Toulmin) Crosland (1812–1895) was a writer of fiction, poetry, essays, and sketches. She also translated works by Victor Hugo.

Elizabeth Ann (Ashurst) Bardonneau (1813–1850) was a member of an important family of radical activists (including her sisters Matilda and Caroline) and the first translator of George Sand's work into English.

Anna Swanwick (1813–1899) was an author and feminist, her philanthropy supporting education for women.

Emma (Brown) Sheppard (1813–1871) campaigned to improve workhouse conditions.

Mary Merryweather (1813–1880) was an activist in education and health, pioneering the training of nurses in Liverpool and Westminster.

Angela Georgina, Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906) was a philanthropist and reformer. She spent much of her inherited wealth on scholarships, endowments, and a wide range of charitable causes. She co–founded Urania Cottage with Charles Dickens, a home for young women who had ‘turned to a life of immorality.’

Ellen Price (1814–1887) was a novelist, better known as Mrs Henry Wood, best remembered for her 1861 novel East Lynne.

Emily Anne Eliza Shirreff (1814–1897) was a pioneer in the cause of better education for women, from 1870 a member of the executive committee of Girton College, Cambridge.

Ada, Countess Lovelace (1815–1862) was the daughter of the poet, Lord Byron. She was encouraged by her mother, Annabella Milbanke, to pursue mathematics and logic, and developed a strong friendship with computing pioneer Charles Babbage. The algorithm she proposed for his Analytical Engine has led to her recognition as the first computer programmer.

Priscilla Bright McLaren (1815–1906) was active in the anti-slavery movement, then in the Edinburgh Women’s Suffrage Society. She came from a wealthy Quaker family, and was the sister of John Bright, a radical politician.

Marion (Kirkland) Reid (1815–1902) was an influential feminist writer, notable for her A Plea for Woman (1843), arguing for their political rights.

Julia Margaret (Pattle) Cameron (1815–1879) was a photographer known for her portraits of celebrities and for images with Arthurian and heroic themes.

Grace Darling (1815–1842) was a Northumberland lighthouse keeper's daughter, catapulted to fame by her rescue of survivors from the shipwrecked Forfarshire in 1838.

Maria Georgina (Shirreff) Grey (1816–1906) was an educationalist with her sister Emily, setting up the Women’s Education Union in 1871, leading to the Girls' Day School Trust.

Eliza Andrews Orme (1816–1892) was a supporter of women's rights, and joined the National Society for Women's Suffrage in 1867.

Frances Browne (1816–1879) was an Irish poet and novelist, best remembered for her collection of short stories for children: Granny's Wonderful Chair.

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) wrote under a pseudonym (Currer Bell) until 1848, as did her sisters Emily (1818–1848) Wuthering Heights, and Anne (1820–1849) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Her father was a country parson; her experience as a governess she likened to slavery. After Jane Eyre (1847), she became friends with Elizabeth Gaskell (who wrote her biography in 1857) and Harriet Martineau, meeting Thackeray and Lewes.

Caroline Ashurst Stansfeld (1816–1889) was active in all areas of feminism, supporting her M.P. husband in his campaigns to repeal the CD Acts.

Deborah (Castle), Lady Bowring (1816–1902) was a prominent Unitarian and Exeter promoter of suffrage.

Anne Jane Thornton (1817–1877) qualifies for her astonishing romantic adventures, the basis of a ballad The Female Sailor.

Elizabeth Carne (1817–1873) came from a wealthy Methodist mining family in Cornwall, devoting her life to philanthropy, to education, and to the study of geology.

Margaret Bright Lucas (1818–1890) was a temperance activist and suffragist, the sister of Priscilla. She served as president of the British Women's Temperance Association, the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and the Bloomsbury branch of the Women's Liberal Association.

Eliza Cook (1818–1889) was an author and poet associated with the Chartist movement. She was a proponent of sexual and political freedom for women, and believed in the ideology of self-improvement through education.

George Eliot (1819–1880) was the pen-name of Marian Evans, author of Middlemarch (1871). She was well-educated, her land-agent father thinking she was not sufficiently attractive to have much chance of marriage. Her public affair with the married critic G.H. Lewes shocked polite society, but did not affect her popularity, Queen Victoria an avid reader of her novels.

Louisa Sophia, Lady Goldsmid (1819–1908) was a philanthropist and education activist, helping her friend Emily Davies to found Girton College. After her husband’s death in 1878, she lived with her friend, the pianist Agnes Zimmermann.

Mary Lloyd (1819–1896) from a wealthy Welsh family, became a sculptor. She lived with Frances Power Cobbe after meeting in Rome in 1861.

Caroline Fox (1819–1871) from an influential Quaker family in Cornwall, promoting the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society with her sister Anna Maria Fox (1816–1897). Caroline was noted for her diaries, published as Memories of Old Friends (1881).

Matilda Mary Hays (1820–1897) was a writer, journalist, and part–time actress (niece of Mary Hays). With Elizabeth Ashurst, Hays translated several of George Sand's works into English. She co-founded the English Woman's Journal. Her love interests included the actress Charlotte Cushman [American] and the poet Adelaide Anne Procter.

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) is best known as the “Lady with the Lamp” in the Crimean War, leading to many reforms in the care of soldiers. Her father was a wealthy landowner. Her social initiatives were no less significant: advocating improved healthcare; better hunger relief in India; abolishing harsh prostitution laws; and expanding the role of women in the workforce. She was also a pioneer in the use of infographics: graphically presenting statistical data.

Anna Sewell (1820–1878) was a novelist from a Quaker family, best known for Black Beauty (1877).

Louisa Twining (1820–1912) was a philanthropist, devoting herself to issues and tasks related to the Poor Law.

Mary Anne Estlin (1820–1902) was an abolitionist and leading figure in anti-slavery and anti-prostitution campaigns.

Anne Jemima Clough (1820–1892) set up schools for the poor in Liverpool and Ambleside, the first Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge.

Elizabeth Wigham (1820–1899) was a leading Scottish suffragist and abolitionist from a Quaker family.

Frances (Braham), Countess Waldegrave (1821–1879) was a Jewish opera singer, married into aristocracy four times, hosting a political salon.

Emelie Ashurst Venturi (1821–1893) edited The Sentinel, the journal of the Ladies’ National Association, from 1871–1886 and was active in promoting the independence of women.

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) was a physician, notable as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States and the first woman on the Medical Register of the General Medical Council. She was the first woman to graduate from a medical school, a pioneer in promoting the education of women in medicine in the United States, and a social and moral reformer in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

Jane (Elgee), Lady Wilde (1821–1896) was an Irish poet and nationalist under the pen name Speranza, helping to gather folktales, a translator from French and German, the mother of Oscar Wilde.

Frances Elizabeth Lupton (1821–1892) opened up educational opportunities for women. She was a niece of Harriet Martineau, and married into the politically active and Unitarian Lupton family of Leeds, where she co-founded the city's Girls' High School in 1876.

Charlotte Maria Tucker (1821–1893) wrote evangelical works for children as A.L.O.E. (A Lady of England), later a missionary in India.

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) was an Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist, and leading women's suffrage campaigner. She lived with the Welsh sculptor Mary Lloyd. Cobbe’s journalism was underpinned by a determination to prove herself the intellectual equal of her male colleagues, and to surpass them in her attentiveness to the social and domestic plight of impoverished women.

Eliza (Lynn) Linton (1822–1898) was a popular novelist and journalist, best known for her later anti-feminism.

Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823–1901) was a traditional novelist, whose books helped to spread the influence of the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement.

Emelia (Batten) Russell Gurney (1823–1896) was an activist and patron.

Eliza (Fox) Bridell (~1824–1903) was a painter and a member of the Society of Female Artists, signing a letter asking academicians to allow women to enter the Royal Academy Schools.

Anna Harriett Drury (1824–1912) was a novelist who wrote "conventional romances, with a few sharp observations on the role of unattached women in their relatives' houses".

Anna Mary (Watts) Howitt (1824–1884) was a painter, writer, and feminist. She was a close friend of Barbara Leigh Smith, having a mental breakdown when she married the French physicist Dr. Éugene Bodichon in 1857.

Jessie Boucherett (1825–1905) was a campaigner for women's rights, founding the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women with Procter and Bodichon.

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) was a poet and philanthropist. She worked prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. She was the favourite poet of Queen Victoria; Coventry Patmore called her the most popular poet of the day, after Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Agnes (Heap) Pochin (1825–1908) was an early British campaigner for women's rights. She funded campaigns, wrote one of the first tracts and was one of the three speakers at the first suffrage meeting in Manchester in 1868. Her daughter was Laura McLaren.

Annie Keary (1825–1879) was a novelist and poet, and an innovative children's writer. With her sister Eliza (1827–1918), who wrote feminist poetry, they helped to run a home for unemployed servant girls in Pimlico.

Rosamond Davenport Hill (1825–1902) was an educational administrator and prison reformer; her sister Florence Davenport Hill (1829–1919) promoted foster care.

Dinah Maria (Mulock) Craik (1826–1887) was a novelist and poet. She is best remembered for her novel John Halifax, Gentleman, which presents the ideals of English middle-class life.

Anna Maria Helena, Comtesse de Noailles (1826–1908) was an important shareholder of the English Woman's Journal and a major supporter of the Langham Place group.

Jane Taylour (~1827–1905) was a women’s suffrage campaigner, travelling around Scotland and northern England giving public lectures.

Barbara (Leigh Smith) Bodichon (1827–1891) was the wealthy natural daughter of the unmarried Whig politician Benjamin Leigh Smith, from a radical Unitarian family. She was an educationalist and artist, a close friend of George Eliot, and a leading feminist and women's rights activist. She published her influential Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women in 1854, set up the Society for Female Artists in 1857, and co-founded the English Woman's Journal with Hays and Parkes in 1858. In 1866, she and Emily Davies started a college in Hitchin which developed into Girton College. [another disgrace – her tomb in Brightling had fallen into disrepair by 2007, restored thanks to Irene Baker and Lesley Abdela]

Margaret Eleanor Parker (1827–1896) was a social activist, social reformer, and travel writer, first President of the British Women's Temperance Association.

Frances Buss (1827–1894) established the North London Collegiate School for Girls, and was a founding member of the Kensington Society.

Lydia Ernestine Becker (1827–1890) was a leader of the suffrage movement, an amateur scientist with interests in biology and astronomy. She founded and published the Women's Suffrage Journal (1870–1890).

Emily Jane (Davis) Pfeiffer (1827–1890) was a Welsh poet and philanthropist.

Jane (Glen) Arthur (1827–1907) was a Scottish feminist, philanthropist, and activist. She was the first woman elected to a Scottish school board.

Elizabeth (Adams) Eiloart (1827–1898) was a novelist and feminist.

Josephine (Grey) Butler (1828–1906) was the daughter of John Grey, a distant cousin of Earl Grey, and an advocate of social reform. She campaigned for women’s education, the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, and against child prostitution. [continued in Cloak of Silence]

Euphemia “Effie” Gray, Lady Millais (1828–1897) was an artist and author, the wife of Pre-Raphaelite painter John Millais. Her sexless marriage to the critic John Ruskin was controversially annulled.

Elizabeth (Whitehead) Malleson (1828–1916) was a teacher, opening the College for Working Women with her husband.

Eleanor Anne Ormerod (1828–1901) was a pioneering agricultural entomologist, publishing articles on pests and insects.

Margaret (Wilson) Oliphant (1828–1897), was a Scottish novelist and historical writer. Her fictional works encompass domestic realism, historical novels, and tales of the supernatural.

Margaret (Fellowes) Mansfield, Baroness Sandhurst (~1828–1892) was a noted suffragist, one of the first women elected to a city council in the United Kingdom.

Maria Susan Rye (1829–1903) was a social reformer, setting up the Victoria Press with Emily Faithfull, and a telegraph school with Isa Craig. Deluged with applications for work, she promoted emigration of working and middle-class girls to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Laura (Bell) Thistlethwaite (1829–1894) was an Irish-born courtesan. She later experienced a religious conversion, becoming a revivalist preacher on morality.

Bessie Rayner Parkes Belloc (1829–1925) was one of the most prominent feminists and campaigners for women's rights, and also a poet, essayist, and journalist.

Catherine (Mumford) Booth (1829–1890) from a Methodist family, founded a Christian Mission in London in 1864 with her husband, William Booth, which grew into the Salvation Army.

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall (1829–1862) was an artist, poet, and artists' model.

Anna Maria (Fisher) Haslam (1829–1922) was a suffragist from an Irish Quaker family and a major figure in the women’s movement in Ireland.

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) wrote ballads and poems: for children, romantic poems, and Christian devotional works. Her father was an Italian poet in exile in London, her brother the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti. Her poetry is marked by symbolism and intense feeling, and she wrote the words for the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.

Emily Davies (1830–1921) was a feminist and suffragist, and a pioneering campaigner for women's rights to university access. She was a co–founder of Girton College, Cambridge University, the first to educate women.

Emma (Martin) Marshall (1830–1899) was a children's author who wrote more than 200 novels.

Elizabeth Brown (1830–1899) was an astronomer, specializing in solar observation, and helping found the British Astronomical Association in 1890.

Mary Priestman (1830–1905), her sisters Anna Maria Priestman (1828–1914), Margaret Tanner (1817–1905), and Elizabeth Bright (1815–1841), came from an activist Newcastle Quaker family. Mary was Secretary of the LNA, Margaret Treasurer, Anna Maria an active campaigner for the LNA and suffrage. Elizabeth was married to John Bright M.P., and the mother of Helen (Bright) Clark (1840–1927).

Isabella Bird (1831–1904), was an explorer, writer, photographer, and naturalist. She was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Helen Taylor (1831–1907) was the daughter of Harriet Taylor Mill by her first husband, and campaigned for female suffrage.

Martha Merington (1831–1912) was a teacher and politician, the first woman elected to serve as a Poor Law Guardian.

Joanna Mary Boyce Wells (1831–1861) was a painter of portraits, genre pictures, and landscapes.

Isabella (Craig) Knox (1831–1903) was a poet, novelist, editor, and writer.

Isabel (Arundell), Lady Burton (1831–1896) from an aristocratic Catholic family, set up the Stella Club to look after the neglected families of Crimean soldiers. She married the explorer Sir Richard Burton, and wrote books on their travels.

Dorothea Beale (1831–1906) was a suffragist, educational reformer, author, Principal of Cheltenham Ladies' College and founder of St Hilda's College, Oxford.

Hannah Tatum (Whitall) Smith (1832–1911) was an American lay speaker and author, moving to England in 1888, active in suffrage and temperance campaigns.

Ada (Shepherd) Barmby (1832–1911) was a suffrage pioneer.

Amy (Kennedy) Burbury (1832–1895) was Secretary of the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage from 1871.

Hilda Brackenbury (1832–1918) became a militant suffragette with her two daughters.

Jane Hume Clapperton (1832–1914) was a philosopher, birth control pioneer, social reformer, and suffragist.

Henrietta Ward (1832–1924) was an artist, her historical scenes frequently featured female heroines, and she later set up an art school for women.

Sarah Smith (1832–1911) was a popular Evangelical author, as Hesba Stretton, of moralizing books for children, protesting against social evils. She helped found the NSPCC.

Mary (Bulteel), Lady Ponsonby (1832–1916) was a Maid-of-Honour and confidante of Queen Victoria, a friend of George Eliot, and a promoter of women’s education with Emily Davies.

Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme-Elmy (1833–1918) was the daughter of a Methodist minister, but received little formal education compared to her brother, who became a Cambridge professor. She campaigned for women’s rights, especially in education, and for the training of teachers.

Maude Stanley (1833–1915) was a youth work and welfare activist.

Thereza Dillwyn Llewelyn (1834–1926) was an astronomer and scientific photographer, working with her father on early photographs of the moon.

Sarah Robinson (1834–1921) was a moral reformer who earned the title “The Soldier’s Friend” for her Christian and temperance work.

Emily Faithfull (1835–1895) was a women's rights activist, and publisher. She managed the Victoria Press as a means of encouraging more women into the printing field.

Ursula (Mellor) Bright (1835–1915) campaigned for women’s rights with her husband, Jacob Bright, M.P. for Manchester.

Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison, Sister Dora (1832–1878), was an Anglican nun and a nurse in Walsall, Staffordshire.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915) was a popular novelist, best known for Lady Audley’s Secret (1862).

Emily Rosaline Orme (1835–1915) was a leader of the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage.

Louisa Stevenson (1835–1908) was a Scottish campaigner for women's university education, women's suffrage, and nursing.

Frances Mary Peard (1835–1923) was an author and traveller who wrote over 40 works of fiction for children or adults.

Annie Miller (1835–1925) was an artists' model, popular with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais.

Anne Isabella Robertson (1835–1910) was a novelist and early Irish campaigner for women’s suffrage, speaking at the Manchester meeting in 1868. [another lost pioneer — newspaper references to her death make no mention of her feminism]

Fanny Cornforth (1835–1909) became the artist's model and mistress of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Jessie Hannah Craigen (c.1835–1899) was a working-class suffrage speaker in a movement of mostly middle and upper-class activists.

Louisa (Garrett) Smith (1835–1867) was the eldest of the remarkable Garrett sisters, educated at Louisa Browning’s Ladies’ boarding school in Blackheath, and Secretary of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage. Her early death from appendicitis inspired her sister Millicent to continue her work. Two of her sisters, born after 1840, were:

Agnes Garrett (1845–1935) was a suffragist, the founder of the Ladies Dwellings Company in 1888, and an interior designer with her [distant] cousin Rhoda Garrett (1841–1882), a prominent suffrage speaker.

Millicent (Garrett) Fawcett (1847–1929) was an intellectual, political leader, activist, and writer. A feminist icon, she is primarily known for her work as a campaigner for women's suffrage, but was active in all areas of feminism from an early age. [date exception]

Isabella Maria Susan Tod (1836–1896) was a Scottish suffragist, women's rights campaigner, and unionist politician in Ireland.

Emma Crouch (1836–1886) was better known as Cora Pearl, a celebrated courtesan in Imperial Paris from 1860, listed for her Memoirs (1886).

Annie Louisa (Walker) Coghill (1836–1907) was a teacher and Canadian author, writing novels and two collections of poetry. From 1866, she lived as housekeeper to her cousin Margaret Oliphant, editing her autobiography.

Isabella Mary Beeton (1836–1865) was a journalist, editor, and writer, particularly associated with her first book Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861). A biographer (Graham Nown) considered her:

... a singular and remarkable woman, praised in her lifetime and later forgotten and ignored when a pride in light pastry were no longer considered prerequisites for womanhood. Yet in her lively, progressive way, she helped many women to overcome the loneliness of marriage and gave the family the importance it deserved. In the climate of her time she was brave, strong–minded and a tireless champion of her sisters everywhere.

Elizabeth (Garrett) Anderson (1836–1917) was a physician and suffragist. She was the first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon. She was the co–founder of the first hospital staffed by women [the author was born in their maternity home], the first dean of a British medical school, the first woman in Britain to be elected to a school board and, as Mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female mayor and magistrate in Britain.

Ellice Hopkins (1836–1904) was a conservative social campaigner and author. A spinster who vigorously advocated moral purity while criticizing contemporary sexual double standards.

Helen (Spottiswoode) Black (1836–1906) was a journalist, best known for her interviews with women writers published in 1893 as Notable Women Authors of the Day [2011 reprint by Victorian Secrets].

Mary Gurney (1836–1917) was an educationalist.

Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie (1837–1919) was a writer and the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray. Her novels were highly regarded, and made her a central figure in the late Victorian literary scene.

Augusta (Davies) Webster (1837–1894) was a poet, dramatist, essayist, translator, and suffrage campaigner.

Agnes McLaren (1837–1913) was a respected Scottish doctor who was the first to give medical assistance to women in India who, because of custom, were unable to access medical help from male doctors. Agnes was active in social justice causes including protests against the white slave trade

Octavia Hill (1838–1912) was a social reformer, campaigning for the welfare of the urban working-classes. She was a founder of the National Trust.

Emma Cons (1838–1912) was a social reformer, educationalist, and theatre manager, re-opening the Old Vic theatre as a temperance tavern in 1880.

Victoria (Clafin) Woodhull Martin (1838–1927) was a revolutionary feminist, born in the USA, advocating free love, running for President in 1872. She moved to Britain in 1877, married a banker, publishing The Humanitarian magazine from 1892, and promoting kindergarten education.

Jane (Burden) Morris (1839–1914) was an embroiderer and artists' model, the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. She was a model and muse to William Morris (1834–1896), the English textile designer, poet, novelist, and socialist activist, whom she later married, and to Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Louisa (Spicer) Martindale (1839–1914) came from a Congregationalist family, and was an activist for women's rights.

Flora Clift Stevenson (1839–1905) was a social reformer with a special interest in education for poor or neglected children, and for women.

Mary (McLean) Crudelius (1839–1877) was a campaigner for women's education, and a supporter of women's suffrage.

Catherine Walters (1839–1920) came from a humble background in Liverpool, moving to London when she was 18 to work in a skittle alley, and as a street prostitute. As ‘Skittles,’ she became a famous courtesan and fashion trendsetter, noted for her wealth, taste and discretion. Her listing recognizes her celebrity and her upward social mobility as a mistress of the Prince of Wales: her portrait now hangs in the Royal Collection.

Rhoda Broughton (1840–1920) was a Welsh novelist and short story writer. Her early novels earned her a reputation for sensationalism which caused her later and stronger work to be neglected by serious critics, though she was described as a queen of the circulating libraries.

Mary Shuttleworth Boden (1840–1922) was a temperance activist.

Mary Hyett (Lidgett) Bunting (1840–1919) was active with her sister Elizabeth Lidgett (1843–1919) in social reform movements, including women’s suffrage and the rights of women workers.

Sarah (Bunting) Amos (1840–1908) became superintendent of the Working Women’s College in London in 1865.

Georgiana (Macdonald), Lady Burne-Jones (1840–1920) was the wife of Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, a confidante and friend of William Morris and George Eliot, and a painter and engraver.

Emilia Francis Strong, Mrs Mark Pattison, Lady Dilke (1840–1904) was an author, art historian, feminist, and trade unionist.

Caroline Ashurst Biggs (1840–1889) was an advocate for women’s rights and a third-generation member of the Ashurst family of radical activists.

Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (1840–1929) was a scholar, author, and campaigner for women's rights. Her most influential publication was British Freewomen: Their Historical Privilege (1894. Her eldest daughter was Marie Stopes, birth control advocate.

Jane (Grant), Lady Strachey (1840–1928) was a suffrage pioneer.

Sophia Jex-Blake (1840–1912) was the first practicing female doctor in Scotland, and campaigned for medical education for women. She founded the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874.