Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, 1827-1891

Pam Hirsch

"Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was the most unconventional and influential leader of the Victorian women's movement. She travelled unchaperoned - shocking respectable society - and she stayed faithful to her close friend George Eliot after her elopement with G. H. Lewes. Passionate and sometimes turbulent, she became briefly involved, like Eliot, with the publisher John Chapman, and later astonished her friends by marrying a French doctor from Algeria, Eugene Bodichon." "The illegitimate daughter of a radical MP, Barbara was one of a 'tabooed family' to relations, including her cousin, Florence Nightingale. If anything, this outsider status gave her strength. As leader of the 'Langham Place Group' she was at the heart of feminist agitation in England and led four great campaigns: for married women to be granted legal recognition, for women's right to work, to vote and to have access to...

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