Discords

by George Egerton

A Psychological Moment at Three Periods: The Child / The Girl / The Woman
Her Share
Gone Under
Wedlock
Virgin Soil
The Regeneration of Two

Genres: 19th Century

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1894

About the author

Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright (born Mary Elizabeth Annie Dunne; 14 December 1859 — 12 August 1945), better known by her pen name George Egerton, (pronounced Edg'er-ton) was a "New Woman" writer and feminist. Widely considered to be one of the most important of the "New Woman" writers of the nineteenth century fin de siecle, she was a friend of George Bernard Shaw, Ellen Terry and J.M. Barrie.

Egerton's stylistic innovations, often termed "proto-modernist" by literary scholars, and her often radical and feminist subject matter[4] have ensured that her fiction continues to generate academic interest in America and Britain. Egerton's experimentation with form and content anticipated the high modernism of writers like James Joyce and D H Lawrence, and Egerton's The Wheel of God often reads as a sort of rudimentary template for Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Thomas Hardy acknowledged the influence of Egerton's work on his own, in particular on the construction of his "New Woman" character, Sue Bridehead, in Jude the Obscure. Perhaps most notably, Holbrook Jackson credits Egerton with the first mention of Friedrich Nietzsche in English literature (she refers to Nietzsche in Keynotes in 1893, three years before the first of Nietzsche's works was translated into English).

Reviews

[Fran]

DNF page 78. I feel bad not finishing this one since it's on both my field and focus list, but honest to god this text is completely incomprehensible to me. I hate modernism.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is maybe the most feminist collection I have ever read. I heard someone talking about Virgin Soul and I found it had been published in this collection. After I read it. I was so moved that i read the other works in this book. I'm so surprised and disappointed that I had never heard of George Egerton before.

[Lily Magoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the insight and beauty of Keynotes but even more gut-wrenching. She writes magic!