The new women and the old men : love, sex, and the woman question /

Brandon is a noted scholar of nineteenth-century European cultural history. Her latest work closely examines the personal relationships forged by some of the leading literary lights of the late Victorian Age who were attempting to live as sexual equals despite cultural imperatives to the contrary. Here the reader meets Eleanor Marx (Karl's youngest daughter), famed South African novelist Olive Schreiner, Havelock Ellis, Rebecca West, H. G. Wells, Margaret Sanger, and their partners in love and life. With the precision of a detective (Brandon is also the author of two detective novels), the author unearths the fascinating evidentiary details that disclose to what degree these allegedly enlightened men and women successfully engaged in an equal partnership (the book's title is a clue). This captivating work, accessible to the general public, makes an important contribution for its articulate rendering of the shocking truths behind the public personae of some significant historical figures. Contains photographs, notes, and bibliography; to be indexed. --Mary Banas

For most Victorians, theirs was an age of reasonably comfortable convention; but for a few bold, imaginative men and women, it was a time for redefining male-female relationships, or what was then called ``the woman question.'' Brandon ( Singer and the Sewing Machine ) here weaves a rich tapestry of the era's pioneering iconoclasts in matters of gender, and offers a careful, interpretive reading-between-the-lines. Among those featured are the ill-fated Avelings: she, Eleanor Marx, the beautiful political activist and daughter of Karl, ended her life to escape her unfaithful husband's cruelties. Another is South African novelist Olive Schreiner, who would have used politics as her forum had she been a man, married to impotent psychologist Havelock Ellis, facing the frustration of childlessness and stymied by her inability to produce a book. Also a focus for Brandon is Rebecca West, whose troubled affair with H. G. Wells produced an illegitimate son. This scholarly work conveys empathy for those who sacrificed themselves on the barricades of a sexual revolution: invariably, the women. Photos not seen by PW. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

This is a fascinating collective biography of five enlightened late Victorian couples and the contradictions, conflicts, and frustrations that plagued their relationships. Through the interwoven stories of a remarkable circle of intellectuals--Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, Olive Schreiner and Havelock Ellis, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, and others--popular cultural historian Brandon seeks to demonstrate the hollowness behind male radicals' embrace of gender equality. Although ``the New Woman sought the New Man,'' what she all too often found in her relationships was disappointment and compromise. Brandon concludes that, almost without exception, the brilliant, forceful, and ambitious women of the age were forced to make compromises that their male companions did not, subordinating their lives to men and adjusting their careers to parameters they set. For academic and larger public libraries.-- Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., N.J. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Informed by a feminist spirit, this lively group portrait of turn-of-the-century British progressives contrasts the sacrifices made by ""New Women"" with the exploits of guilt-free ""New Men."" Cultural historian (The Spiritualists, 1983, etc.) and mystery writer (Left, Right and Centre, 1986) Brandon begins with the 1884 English ""honeymoon"" of two unmarried couples--Eleanor Marx (Karl Marx's political activist daughter) and her lover, Dr. Edward Aveling; and Olive Schreiner, the celebrated South African novelist, and pioneer sexologist Henry Havelock Ellis. Breaking out of ""the old restrictions,"" these New Women were taking a stand on the ""Women Question,"" which, beyond suffrage, involved ""a whole range of inequities and moral and economic double standards."" A thoughtful and witty commentator, Brandon pulls us into the relationships of these four and of an interconnected group of socialists whose lives brought to a boil the political and sexual ferment of their age. Too soon, of course, their various honeymoons were over--at a greater cost to the women than to the men. Rebecca West, for instance, hid with an illegitimate son in a village away from London's literary scene while the child's other parent, H.G. Wells, who propounded ""free and guiltless sexual choice"" in his books, continued to enjoy the comforts of his conventional marriage. In Brandon's view, only two of these New Women, Olive Schreiner (""married"" to her books) and Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer who was involved with both Ellis and Wells, ""succeeded in living their lives as freely as if they had been men."" This frank social history glares into the treacherous chasm between modern theory and late-Victorian practice when it came to the Woman Question--a question that a century later finds no easy answer. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.