“Admirable, lucid… A splendid textbook (complete with chronologies of significant dates) that offers a competent overview of feminist protest in the Victorian era. It will be widely recommended for students of history and women’s studies courses in higher education.” -- Times Higher Education Supplement“An excellent, well-researched survey of the many fronts of feminist struggle for equality from 1850 to 1900… The thesis of this small useful book is that the aggressive activities of the well-known British suffragettes have obscured the significance of other areas of the feminist movement in the half-century before 1900. Philippa Levine’s survey of Victorian feminism covers these neglected issues succinctly… A great asset to all courses on modern England and British feminism.” -- American Historical Review

Victorian feminism, 1850-1900

Politics & Social Sciences

Levine, Philippa

Social Sciences

Hutchinson Education

In 1883, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the word "eugenics" to express his dream of perfecting the human race by applying the laws of genetic heredity. Adapting Darwin's theory of evolution to human society, eugenics soon became a powerful, international movement, committed to using the principles of heredity and statistics to encourage healthy and discourage unhealthy reproduction. Early in the twentieth century and across the world, doctors, social reformers, and politicians turned to the new science of eugenics as a means to improve and strengthen their populations. Eugenics advocates claimed their methods would result in healthier, fitter babies and would dramatically limit human suffering. The reality was a different story. In the name of scientific progress and of human improvement, eugenicists targeted the weak and the sick, triggering coercive legislation on issues as disparate as race, gender, immigration, euthanasia, abortion, sterilization, intelligence, mental illness, and disease control. Nationalists eagerly embraced eugenics as a means to legitimize their countries' superiority and racialized assumptions, and the Nazis notoriously used eugenics to shape their "final solution." In this lucid volume, Philippa Levine tackles the intricate and controversial history of eugenics, masterfully synthesizing the enormous range of policies and experiments carried out in the name of eugenics around the world throughout the twentieth century. She questions the widespread belief that eugenics disappeared after World War II and evaluates the impact of eugenics on current reproductive and genetic sciences. Charting the development of such controversial practices as artificial insemination, sperm donation, and population control, this book offers a powerful, extraordinarily timely reflection on the frequent interplay between genetics and ethics. Eugenics may no longer be a household word, but we feel its effects even today.

Eugenics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

History

Europe

Oxford University Press

A lively collection of essays on the cultures of nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. Topics range from prostitution and slavery to the effect of war on fashion magazine reporting to inter-racial marriage in the postwar years. Particular areas of focus include the Second World War, its legacies and the reactions to postwar decolonization.

Gender, Labour, War and Empire: Essays on Modern Britain

Grayzel, Susan R.

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Prostitution, Race and Politics

In addition to shouldering the blame for the increasing incidence of venereal disease among sailors and soldiers, prostitutes throughout the British Empire also bore the burden of the contagious diseases ordinances that the British government passed. By studying how British authorities enforced these laws in four colonial sites between the 1860s and the end of the First World War, Philippa Levine reveals how myths and prejudices about the sexual practices of colonized peoples not only had a direct and often punishing effect on how the laws operated, but how they also further justified the distinction between the colonizer and the colonized.

Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire

Americas

Routledge

Self-Help

Violent, powerful, vast: the British Empire is typically viewed as distant and tropical. By contrast, this book examines the effects of the empire on men, women and children across the globe: both those under imperial rule and those who implemented it. Looking beyond politics and diplomacy, Philippa Levine combines a traditional approach to colonial history with an investigation of the experience of living within the empire. Spanning the period from Cromwell’s rule to decolonization in the late twentieth century, and including an extensive chronology for ease of reference, Levine considers the impact of British rule for people in Africa, India and Australia, as well as for the English rulers, and for the Welsh, Scots and Irish who were subject to 'internal colonialism' under the English yoke. Imperialism often led to serious unrest; Levine examines the cruel side of imperialism’s purportedly 'civilizing' mission unflinchingly.

The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset

PRENTICE/HALL

Feminist Lives in Victorian England: Private Roles and Public Commitment

Victorian women were more in control of their lives and collective destinies than historians have previously credited. This new study of nineteenth-century feminism combines the findings of extensive research with a strong emphasis on redefining the mould of politics in Victorian England. By looking at the writings of many women actively identified as feminists the author reveals how their political commitment suffused the lives they led. She argues that attempts to use trade unions, Parliament, the legal and medical professions and other bodies from which women were barred as yardsticks of political activity are bound to be misleading. Philippa Levine shows instead the subtler ways in which they used the activities open to them to reject many of the most persistent features of the "separate sphere" ideology which excluded them from public life. In employing a theoretical perspective culled from contemporary feminist scholarship, this analysis goes beyond such traditional categories as class, evangelicalism, liberalism, and latterly socialism, to a recognition of the centrality of gender in the making of nineteenth-century politics.

World

Blackwell Pub.

Victorian Feminism 1850-1900

Women's Studies

Florida State Univ Pr

The second half of the nineteenth century saw in newly industrialized England the creation of a “domestic ideology” that drew a sharp line between domestic woman and public man. Though never the dominant reality, this demarcation of men’s and women’s spheres ordered people’s values and justified the existing social structure. Out of this context sprang a women’s movement that celebrated its female identity, its campaigns “concerned as much with promoting that optimistic self-image as with a simple call for equality with men.” Levine traces the changing face of a half century of England’s feminist movement, the personalities who dominated it, its pressing issues, and the tactics employed in the fight. Political themes common to the specific protests, she finds, included women’s moral superiority, a close-knit sense of a supportive female community, and a conscious woman-centeredness of interests. Along the way, Levine puts to rest many inaccuracies and assumptions that have dogged the history of presuffragette feminism, causing it to be discredited or dismissed. She refutes, for example, the judgement that the movement served only the needs of bourgeois women, and she warns against the pitfall of defining feminism by the standards of a male politics whose practices make comparisons inadequate and unsuitable. Levine has organized her study with an eye to the breadth of concerns that characterized England’s nineteenth-century feminism: women’s entry into education and the professions; trade unionism, working conditions, equal pay; suffrage and other political and property rights for women; marriage and morality issues―prostitution, incest, venereal disease, wife abuse, pornography, and equal rights to divorce.

Victorian Feminism, 1850-1900

University Press of Florida

The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset is a broad survey of the history of the British Empire from its beginnings to its demise that offers a comprehensive analysis of what life was like under colonial rule, weaving the everyday stories of people living through the experience of colonialism into the bigger picture of empire. The experience of the British Empire was not limited to what happened behind closed doors or on the floor of Parliament. It affected men, women and children across the globe, making a difference to what they ate and what kind of work they did, what languages and lessons they learned in school, and how they were able to live their lives. This new edition expands its coverage and discusses the relationship between Brexit and empire as well as the recent controversies connected to empire that have engulfed Britain: the Windrush scandal, the fight over the Chagos Islands and the Mau Mau lawsuits, bringing it up to date and engaging with key debates that govern the study of empire. Painting a picture of life for all those affected by empire and supported by maps and illustrations, this is the perfect text for all students of imperial history.

The British Empire

Africa

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Books by Levine, Philippa