Eliza Lynn Linton (1822–1898) (Keswick) (Background page)
Eliza Lynn (1822–1898) is difficult to pin down. She broke boundaries by becoming England’s first salaried female journalist.
She was also an outspoken anti-feminist who dismissed suffragists as a ‘shrieking sisterhood’ and argued that a woman’s place was in the home. In her autobiography, she portrayed herself as a man and revealed sexual relationships with other women while condemning ‘manly women and effeminate men’.
Eliza was the twelfth child of the Reverend James Lynn, born at Crosthwaite Vicarage, near Keswick, in 1822. Her mother died young and her father didn’t see to her schooling, but undeterred, Eliza schooled herself. While still a teenager, she taught herself to read several languages, including Greek and Latin. She also decided to become a professional writer.
At the age of 23, she set out for London on her own - a bold move. The daughters of Victorian clergymen weren’t supposed to leave home to lead independent lives in London. But Eliza was a freethinker, and her early writings earned her a reputation as a radical. They also won praise from literary figures like the poet Algernon Swinburne, and support from Charles Dickens and the journalist John Douglas Cook, who hired her as a correspondent on the Morning Chronicle.
By the 1860s, Eliza’s political stance shifted. She started publishing polemics that attacked women’s rights and denounced ‘unladylike’ behaviour. Her infamous article ‘The Girl of the Period’ chastised young women for flirting, wearing cosmetics and ignoring their domestic duties.
The shift in Eliza’s outlook has sparked speculation. Did it reflect inner struggles? Or was she catering to patriarchal readers to ensure herself an income? Her later writings have inspired more questions than answers, partly because she continued publishing progressive works as well.
Her 1872 novel The True History of Joshua Davidson, Christian and Communist attacked the Church of England, and in The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland (1885) she challenged Victorian conceptions of sexuality by casting herself as a man. Today, the book is widely regarded as a pioneering work of literary transvestism.
Her antifeminist essays notwithstanding, it’s clear that Eliza didn’t entirely turn her back on her early feminist ideas. She advocated for the legal rights of married women, arguing that they should be allowed to own their own income and possessions. When she wed in 1858, she made her husband grant her full control of her money and property.
Eliza’s marriage wasn’t a happy one, but it did bring her back to the Lake District. Her husband, the engraver James Linton, settled at Brantwood, near Coniston, and Eliza often visited him there. The two even collaborated to produce a beautifully illustrated book about the region called The Lake Country (1864).
Being a professional writer, Eliza spent most of her life in London, but she never ceased to love her native region. She chose to be buried here when she died in 1898.
Text by Christopher Donaldson
Image: Woodburytype of Eliza Lynn Linton, Unknown date, Source: Cowan's Auctions, Author W.&D. Downey, London. Public Domain.
References
Nancy Fix Anderson, ‘Linton, Elizabeth (Eliza) Lynn (1822–1898), writer’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 < https://www.oxforddnb.com> [accessed 27 June 2024].
Valerie Sanders, The Private Lives of Victorian Women: Autobiography in Nineteenth-century England (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989).
