Edith Simcox

Edith Jemima Simcox (21 August 1844 – 15 September 1901) was a British writer, trade union activist, a proto-feminist suffragist. She began her writing career as a reviewer, publishing criticism under the pseudonym "H. Lawrenny," including an important review of the Memoir of Jane Austen (1870).[1] In 1875 she and Emma Paterson became the first women to attend the Trades Union Congress as delegates. In 1872, when she was preparing a book review of Middlemarch, Edith Simcox met and fell in love with the female novelist known by her pseudonym, George Eliot. Although this "love-passion" was not reciprocated, Simcox was determined "to love rather than be loved" and continued to be a devoted friend to Eliot. For Simcox's complete journal, see Fulmer and Barfield, eds., Autobiography of a Shirtmaker. Simcox lived at 60 Dean Street, London. From 1879-1882 she was a member of the London School Board representing Westminster.[2]

Works
  • Natural Law: An Essay in Ethics (1877)
  • George Eliot. Her life and works (1881) article in the Nineteenth Century
  • Episodes in the Lives of Men, Women and Lovers (1882) fiction
  • The Capacity of Women (1887) article in the Nineteenth Century
  • Primitive Civilizations: or Outlines of the History of Ownership in Archaic Communities (1894)
  • A Monument to the Memory of George Eliot: Edith J. Simcox's Autobiography of a Shirtmaker (1998) autobiography, edited by Constance M. Fulmer and Margaret E. Barfield (New York: Routledge, 1997)

References
  1. Looser, Devoney (2017). The Making of Jane Austen. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 148. ISBN 978-1421422824.
  2. "London School Board Elections". Daily News. 29 November 1879.

Further reading

  • K. A. McKenzie (1961) Edith Simcox and George Eliot
  • Rosemarie Bodenheimer, 'Autobiography in Fragments: The Elusive Life of Edith Simcox', Victorian Studies 44 (Spring 2002): 399-422
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