Class Act: Servants and Mistresses in the Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

This is the author's accepted manuscript of the chapter published in the book "Elizabeth Gaskell: Victorian Culture and the Art of Fiction: Essays for the Bicentenary," edited by Sandro Jung

Transported to Botany Bay: Imagining Australia in Nineteenth-Century Convict Broadsides

The speaker of this ballad (circa 1828) laments the fact that, though he was born of “honest parents,” he became “a roving blade” and has been convicted of an unspecified crime for which he has been sentenced to “Botany Bay,” a popular name for Australia. Although he addresses his audience as “young men of learning,” the rest of the ballad implies that he, as is conventional in the broadside form, is a working-class apprentice gone astray. Like this fictional speaker, approximately 160,000 men and women convicted of crimes ranging from poaching hares to murder – but mostly theft – were transported to one of the new British colonies in Australia between the years 1787 and 1867. Minor crimes such as shoplifting, which today would merit some community service and a fine, yielded a sentence of seven years, while other felons were sentenced for fourteen years to life for more serious crimes. While non-fictional accounts of the young colony of New South Wales were published in Britain almost as soon as the First Fleet arrived there in 1788, these were written by people with at least a middle-class education, whereas the vast majority of the convicted felons who were transported came from the working classes. Since books and newspapers were expensive and the level of literacy among working-class people varied considerably, few of them would have had access to such accounts of the new colonies. Several descriptions, mostly borrowed from the writings of the officers who accompanied the First Fleet, were published in cheap chapbook form, while occasional letters from convicts to their families were printed and distributed, and of course there were unpublished letters plus word-of-mouth reports from convicts or soldiers who did return. But none of these were broadly disseminated among working-class people

The Female Visitor and the Marriage of Classes in Gaskell's North and South

This is the published version, also found here: http://ucpressjournals.com/journal.php?j=nc

Servants and hands: Representing the working classes in Victorian factory novels

Copyright 2000, Cambridge University PressEARLY IN Frances Trollope’s 1839 novel The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy, the title character is introduced into the kitchen of Sir Matthew Dowling’s home. The assembled servants, rigidly organized into their own hierarchy of status and position, react with horror and derision at the very idea of a factory boy joining the household on any terms. The only way in which they can explain such a preposterous idea is to speculate that the boy is Sir Matthew’s illegitimate son; only by inventing a hidden genealogy can they imagine a place for a factory worker in the genteel British home (Figure 2)

Rev. of Victorian Hybridities: Cultural Anxiety and Formal Innovation

This is the published version, also found here: http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=modernphilolog

Transported to Botany Bay Class, National Identity, and the Literary Figure of the Australian Convict

In analyzing depictions of Australian convicts in novels, broadsides, and first-person accounts, Dorice Williams Elliott demonstrates how Britain linked class, race, and national identity at a key historical moment when it was still negotiating its relationship with its empire.Intro -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Convict Transportation to Australia -- National Identity and Social Class -- Imagining an Australian Identity -- The Literary Figure of the Convict in Australia -- One: Dickens and the Transported Convict -- Great Expectations -- Household Words -- Two: Englishness and the Working Class inTransportation Broadsides -- The Cultural Work of the Broadsides -- Broadside Ballads and Their Tunes -- The Visual Impact of the Broadsides -- Full-Sheet Broadsides and Levels of Literacy -- The (Mistaken) Land of Exile -- Three: Writing Convicts and Hybrid Genres -- The Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux -- Convict-Authored Novels -- Quintus Servinton -- Ralph Rashleigh -- Four: The Transported Convict Novel -- The English Convict Novel as a Genre -- The Working-Class Woman Convict:The History of Margaret Catchpole -- G. P. R. James's The Convict: A Tale -- Charles Reade's It Is Never Too Late to Mend -- Five: Convict Servants and Genteel Mistresses in Women's Convict Fiction -- George Eliot's Adam Bede -- Mary Vidal and "The Convict Laundress" -- Caroline Leakey's The Broad Arrow -- Eliza Winstanley's For Her Natural Life -- Six: After Transportation:Three Approaches -- Marcus Clarke's His Natural Life -- Anthony Trollope's Harry Heathcote of Gangoil -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: Dickens and the Transported Convict -- Chapter 2: Englishness and the Working Class in Transportation Broadsides -- Chapter 3: Writing Convicts and Hybrid Genres -- CChapter 4: The Transported Convict Novel -- Chapter 5: Convict Servants and Genteel Mistresses -- Chapter 6: After Transportation -- Epilogue -- Selected Bibliography -- IndexIn analyzing depictions of Australian convicts in novels, broadsides, and first-person accounts, Dorice Williams Elliott demonstrates how Britain linked class, race, and national identity at a key historical moment when it was still negotiating its relationship with its empire.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries