Emma Brooke

Emma Brooke or Emma Frances Brooke (22 December 1844 – December 1926) was a British novelist and a campaigner for the rights of women.

Emma Brooke
Born22 December 1844[1]
Cheshire
Died1926
Weybridge
Occupationwriter
NationalityBritish
Literary movementNew Woman

Life

Brooke was born in Cheshire on 22 December 1844. Her father was a capitalist and she was brought up in Bollington. Her father died in 1872 and with her inheritance she invested it in her own education.[1] She was educated at Newnham College and the London School of Economics.[2] After her left Newnham she returned to Bollington where she lost some of her money. However she remained single and supported herself from her writing.[1]

Her most well known book at the time was the Superfluous Woman. This was called an immoral tale as involved a story where the heroine dies giving birth to a deformed child as the result of marrying an older man who had syphilis. This was the first of her "New Woman" novels.[3] Brooke saw this novel and The Woman Who Did as important in trying to resolved the "Sex Question" which she thought dominated debate in the 1880s. She was annoyed when H. G. Wells reinvented the question when he spoke to the Fabian Society in 1906.[4]

Brooke died at a nursing home in Weybridge in 1926.[2]

Works
  • A Fair Country Maid (1883)
  • Superfluous Woman (1894)[1]
  • Transition: A Novel (1895)[5]
  • Life the Accuser (1896)
  • The Engrafted Rose (1900)
  • Sir Elyot of the Woods (1907)

References
  1. Emma Brooke (22 October 2015). A Superfluous Woman. Victorian Secrets Limited. pp. 5–. ISBN 978-1-906469-56-6.
  2. Emma Brooke, Elmbridgehundred, Retrieved 21 June 2016
  3. Christine L. Krueger (1 July 2014). Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Centuries. Infobase Publishing. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-4381-0870-4.
  4. Emma Brooke:Fabian, feminist and writer, Kay Daniels, Women’s History Review, Volume 12, Number 2, 2003
  5. archive.org
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