Eliza Lynn Linton, novelist and journalist, continues in importance today because of her role as one of the first women to earn a living as a journalist. Between 1860 and 1867, she wrote more than 200 articles for such journals as All the Year Round, the Cornhill,Temple Bar,London, the Saturday Review, and the Athenaeum. Her subjects--the social and political ramifications of the woman question, literary criticism, and contemporary social customs--provide the modern social historian with information about a conservative yet independent woman's views on such diverse issues as the emancipation of women and social Darwinism.

Eliza Lynn, the youngest of twelve children, was born at Keswick on 10 February 1822. After their mother died when Eliza was an infant, the older children shared in the nurture of the younger ones. Deprivation of love and benign neglect in her early years influenced Linton for the rest of her life. In her autobiography...