Drawing heavily from archival research conducted by the candidate, this project attempts to restore the marginalised poet and novelist Violet Fane (Landy Mary Montgomeryshire Currie, nee Lamb 1843-1905) to the nineteenth century women's literary canon. Having been categorised as only a frivolous writer of pretty verses, who, as an aristocratic woman, has been deemed 'irrelevant' or 'unimportant', Fane has been either completely ignored, or largely dismissed by the current literary scholarship prior to this study. As the first thesis-length critical discussion of Violet Fane and her writing, the primary purpose of this project is not only to retrieve Fane as a relevant figure in the literary history of the nineteenth century as a poet, a celebrity writer, and an ambassadress, but also to illustrate the tensions within her soft-representations that cause her serious political works to be trivialised. Proposing to recuperate Fane as a writer of many genres who engaged with political, artistic, and historical issues of her day, this thesis will examine her literary identities in parallel with her life, which was an important source of inspiration for her writings.
Violet Fane: An Intellectual Biography
Kosker, C. (Author). 2017
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy