Nineteenth-century British women historians: Biography and edition in the works by Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland, and Mary Anne Everett Green

Abstract

The present article discusses the biographies of women of historical significance written by the prolific sisters Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland, and the editorial work developed by the renowned historian Mary Anne Everett Green as editor of the selection of epistles gathered in the three volumes of Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain, as well as of 41 volumes of the Calendar of State Papers. Her editorial criteria will be analysed in both cases, and it will be seen how it was she who established and fixed the standard editing criteria in the case of the Calendars. Their work will be contextualised and connected with that of other nineteenth-century women historians, with their thematic preferences when writing history, and with the difficulties they faced when researching and publishing in a discipline at the time considered proper to men.