Publisher's Synopsis
When the Chartist leader Ernest Jones emerged from prison in 1850, he was determined to capture the public's attention with a controversial and topical novel. The result of his endeavours was the remarkable Woman's Wrongs, a series of five tales exploring women's oppression at every level of society from the working class to the aristocracy. Each story presents a graphic, often harrowing account of the social, economic and emotional victimisation of women, and taken together the tales comprise a devastating indictment of Victorian patriarchal attitudes and sexual inequalities. - - But Jones also shows women's refusal to accept this subjugated role, and he creates some of Victorian literature's most subversive and unruly heroines. He draws on sensationalism, reportage, melodrama and political analysis in order to expose the wrongs done by and to women. The radicalism and inclusiveness of his theme makes Woman's Wrongs a completely unique literary achievement. It is reprinted here for the first time since the 1850s. - - In his substantial Introduction, Ian Haywood places the novel in the context of Jones's career as a Chartist author and editor, and in the wider context of the 'woman question'. Some of the topics covered by the Introduction include: the radical press and popular enlightenment, Jones's rivalry with George W. M. Reynolds, and the needlewoman as radical icon. - - Woman's Wrongs is the final volume of Ashgate's reprints of Chartist fiction: the other two volumes, both edited by Ian Haywood, are The Literature of Struggle: An Anthology of Chartist Fiction (1995) and Chartist Fiction: Thomas Doubleday's 'The Political Pilgrim's Progress' and Thomas Martin Wheeler's 'Sunshine and Shadow' (1999).
