Julia Augusta Webster: Victorian Aesthetisim and the Woman Writer

This book treats the literary work of Julia Augusta Webster within the context of Websters participation in nineteenth century British aestheticism. Websters personal life, her experience as a member of the Suffrage Society and her tenure on the London School Board, as well as her position as poetry reviewer for the Athenaeum and participation in the salon society of the 1880s, inform her later work, but her earliest poetry and fiction also reflect the beginnings of the aestheticist perspective on the transience and impermanence of life. This book makes use of extensive archival materials to provide context for a study of Websters literary work, beginning with her first volume of poetry Blanche Lisle and concluding with her posthumously published Mother and Daughter sonnets. In tracing the trajectory of Websters development as an aestheticist poet, Patricia Rigg extends Webster scholarship into areas of the writers work not previously explored.