y separately published work icon Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1864... 1864 Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils
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Notes

  • Dedication: To the Duchess of Athole, in acknowledgement of past kindness, this tale is gratefully dedicated by the author.

Contents

* Contents derived from the Melbourne, Victoria,:Hill of Content , 1985 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Book Review, single work review
— Review of Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils Elizabeth A. Murray , 1864 single work novel ;
(p. 398-400)
Ella Norman, single work review
— Review of Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils Elizabeth A. Murray , 1864 single work novel ;
(p. 400-405)
The New Victorian Novel, single work review
— Review of Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils Elizabeth A. Murray , 1864 single work novel ;
(p. 406-420)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Hurst and Blackett ,
      1864 .
      Extent: 3v. (x, 320; 320; 311p.)p.
      Note/s:
      • Preface by the author.
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Hill of Content , 1985 .
      Extent: 420p.
      Note/s:
      • Foreword by Brian Murray, Governor of Victoria, the author's great-grandson.
      • Includes original preface by Elizabeth A. Murray.
      • A redisovered 19th Century novel by Victoria's first woman novelist (appears on cover).
      • Contains section of substantial newspaper reviews of the book on its first appearance in 1864 (pp. 398-420).
      ISBN: 0855721571

Works about this Work

The Antipodes of Victorian Fiction : Mapping 'Down Under' Tamara S. Wagner , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Victorian Popular Fictions , Autumn vol. 1 no. 2 2019;

'Victorian settler fiction produced in colonial Australia and New Zealand increasingly expressed a search for settler identity, and yet it partly remained targeted at readers “at home,” at the centre of the British Empire. Nineteenth-century novels of daily life in the colonial settlements, therefore, also functioned as fictional maps for readers in Victorian Britain and elsewhere in the expanding empire. While some of these publications explicitly addressed potential emigrants, others endeavoured to reshape Britain’s antipodes in the popular imagination more generally. Australian and New Zealand women writers dismantled clichés involving bush-rangers, gold-diggers, as well as escaped convicts and resented returnees. By drawing on a variety of settler novels by female authors, I aim to track how their fictional maps for readers overseas worked and how these maps shifted in the course of the century. In particular, I focus on the motif of the homecoming and how its reworking in nineteenth-century settler fiction reveals shifting attitudes towards emigration and empire, homemaking and homecoming, old and new homes.'

Source: Abstract.

Self-Made Maids : British Emigration to the Pacific Rim and Self-Help Narratives Melissa Walker , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Victorian Literature and Culture , June vol. 43 no. 2 2015; (p. 281-304)
'The Victorian discourse of self-help, popularized by Samuel Smiles in the mid-nineteenth century, was integral to the success of mid-Victorian British emigration and colonialism. As Robert Hogg notes in his study of British colonial violence in British Columbia and Queensland, Samuel Smiles's notion of character, which embraced the virtues of hard work, perseverance, self-reliance, and energetic action, helped sanction masculine colonial violence and governance in these regions (23–24). According to Robert Grant in his examination of mid-Victorian emigration to Canada and Australia, one's desire “to better him or herself” was closely entwined with Smiles's self-help philosophy and the rhetoric of colonial promotion permeating British self-help texts “in the projection of the laborer's progress from tenant to smallholder to successful landowner through hard work” (178–79). Francine Tolron similarly observes the pervasiveness of the success narrative in emigrant accounts of New Zealand, noting that this story often constitutes “yet another tale of the British march of Progress” (169) with the yeoman, John Bull, as the hero at its centre, who adopts the imperialist impetus to subdue the wilderness and recreate an ideal England in which a man can earn gentility through hard work and uprightness of character (169–70). She extends accounts by male emigrants to New Zealand to the “collective psyche” of all New Zealanders “whose stuff is made up of earth, so to speak, the inheritors of the old archetypal Englishman who worked on the land before the dawn of the industrial era” (173). These studies contribute significantly to a growing body of scholarship that considers the connections between self-help literature and British emigration and colonialism. Yet, occasionally such analyses apply the meaning of self-help rhetoric universally across British male and female emigrant groups when the rise from tenant to landowner was typically a male, not a female, prerogative. Building on this important body of work, this paper considers how domestic concerns, rather than a sole focus on controlling foreign lands and people, informed versions of success penned by a particular group of mid-Victorian middle-class female emigrants and these women's understanding of their positioning within the colonies.' (Publication abstract)
Readers' Choice : Tales of Sensation and Sentiment 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 13 May 2012; (p. 17)
y separately published work icon Sensational Melbourne : Reading, Sensation Fiction and 'Lady Audley's Secret' in the Victorian Metropolis Susan K. Martin , Kylie Mirmohamadi , North Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2011 Z1802540 2011 single work criticism 'Colonial Melbournians were mad about Sensation fiction - full of thrills and scandal; divorce, bigamy, mistaken identity and murder. Sensational Melbourne takes us through the libraries, the shops, the tramways, the theatres, the back lanes and the drawing rooms of Marvelous Melbourne, and shows how the city was built on words as much as gold. It traces the passage of the most popular novel of the nineteenth century, Lady Audley's Secret, from England to Melbourne's port and through the cultural byways of Melbourne out through the suburbs, and into Australian literature.' -- Back cover.
Untitled 1986 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 12 January 1986; (p. 8)

— Review of Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils Elizabeth A. Murray , 1864 single work novel
Book Review 1864 single work review
— Appears in: The Athenaeum , 27 February 1864; (p. 1) Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils 1985; (p. 398-400)

— Review of Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils Elizabeth A. Murray , 1864 single work novel
Ella Norman 1864 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art , 26 March 1864; (p. 2) Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils 1985; (p. 400-405)

— Review of Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils Elizabeth A. Murray , 1864 single work novel
The New Victorian Novel 1864 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 20 May 1864; Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils 1985; (p. 406-420)

— Review of Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils Elizabeth A. Murray , 1864 single work novel
The New Victorian Novel 1864 single work review
— Appears in: The Leader , 21 May 1864; (p. 17-18)

— Review of Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils Elizabeth A. Murray , 1864 single work novel
A Colonial Melodrama Revisited Peter Pierce , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 14 December 1985; (p. 12)

— Review of Ella Norman, or, A Woman's Perils Elizabeth A. Murray , 1864 single work novel
y separately published work icon Sensational Melbourne : Reading, Sensation Fiction and 'Lady Audley's Secret' in the Victorian Metropolis Susan K. Martin , Kylie Mirmohamadi , North Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2011 Z1802540 2011 single work criticism 'Colonial Melbournians were mad about Sensation fiction - full of thrills and scandal; divorce, bigamy, mistaken identity and murder. Sensational Melbourne takes us through the libraries, the shops, the tramways, the theatres, the back lanes and the drawing rooms of Marvelous Melbourne, and shows how the city was built on words as much as gold. It traces the passage of the most popular novel of the nineteenth century, Lady Audley's Secret, from England to Melbourne's port and through the cultural byways of Melbourne out through the suburbs, and into Australian literature.' -- Back cover.
Readers' Choice : Tales of Sensation and Sentiment 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 13 May 2012; (p. 17)
Self-Made Maids : British Emigration to the Pacific Rim and Self-Help Narratives Melissa Walker , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Victorian Literature and Culture , June vol. 43 no. 2 2015; (p. 281-304)
'The Victorian discourse of self-help, popularized by Samuel Smiles in the mid-nineteenth century, was integral to the success of mid-Victorian British emigration and colonialism. As Robert Hogg notes in his study of British colonial violence in British Columbia and Queensland, Samuel Smiles's notion of character, which embraced the virtues of hard work, perseverance, self-reliance, and energetic action, helped sanction masculine colonial violence and governance in these regions (23–24). According to Robert Grant in his examination of mid-Victorian emigration to Canada and Australia, one's desire “to better him or herself” was closely entwined with Smiles's self-help philosophy and the rhetoric of colonial promotion permeating British self-help texts “in the projection of the laborer's progress from tenant to smallholder to successful landowner through hard work” (178–79). Francine Tolron similarly observes the pervasiveness of the success narrative in emigrant accounts of New Zealand, noting that this story often constitutes “yet another tale of the British march of Progress” (169) with the yeoman, John Bull, as the hero at its centre, who adopts the imperialist impetus to subdue the wilderness and recreate an ideal England in which a man can earn gentility through hard work and uprightness of character (169–70). She extends accounts by male emigrants to New Zealand to the “collective psyche” of all New Zealanders “whose stuff is made up of earth, so to speak, the inheritors of the old archetypal Englishman who worked on the land before the dawn of the industrial era” (173). These studies contribute significantly to a growing body of scholarship that considers the connections between self-help literature and British emigration and colonialism. Yet, occasionally such analyses apply the meaning of self-help rhetoric universally across British male and female emigrant groups when the rise from tenant to landowner was typically a male, not a female, prerogative. Building on this important body of work, this paper considers how domestic concerns, rather than a sole focus on controlling foreign lands and people, informed versions of success penned by a particular group of mid-Victorian middle-class female emigrants and these women's understanding of their positioning within the colonies.' (Publication abstract)
The Antipodes of Victorian Fiction : Mapping 'Down Under' Tamara S. Wagner , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Victorian Popular Fictions , Autumn vol. 1 no. 2 2019;

'Victorian settler fiction produced in colonial Australia and New Zealand increasingly expressed a search for settler identity, and yet it partly remained targeted at readers “at home,” at the centre of the British Empire. Nineteenth-century novels of daily life in the colonial settlements, therefore, also functioned as fictional maps for readers in Victorian Britain and elsewhere in the expanding empire. While some of these publications explicitly addressed potential emigrants, others endeavoured to reshape Britain’s antipodes in the popular imagination more generally. Australian and New Zealand women writers dismantled clichés involving bush-rangers, gold-diggers, as well as escaped convicts and resented returnees. By drawing on a variety of settler novels by female authors, I aim to track how their fictional maps for readers overseas worked and how these maps shifted in the course of the century. In particular, I focus on the motif of the homecoming and how its reworking in nineteenth-century settler fiction reveals shifting attitudes towards emigration and empire, homemaking and homecoming, old and new homes.'

Source: Abstract.

Last amended 7 Feb 2007 16:00:33
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