Lissa Paul
Hardback
May 2019 • ISBN 9781644530092 • $102.95
Paperback
May 2019 • ISBN 9781644530108 • $46.95
* E-Book Available
Order Online
Series
Early Modern Feminisms
Eliza Fenwick is the previously untold story of the life of an extraordinary woman who paved her own unique path throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as she made her way from country to country, from working as a writer to becoming a teacher and school owner. Author Lissa Paul brings to light Fenwick’s letters for the first time to show the relationships she developed with many key figures of her time, and to tell Fenwick’s story as depicted by the woman herself. She began as a writer in the radical London of the 1790s, in Mary Wollstonecraft’s circle, and when her marriage crumbled, she became a prolific author of children’s literature to support her family. Fenwick eventually moved to Barbados, becoming the owner of a school, while confronting the reality of slavery in the British Colonies. She would go on to establish schools in numerous cities in the U.S. and Canada, all the while taking care of her daughter and grandchildren. Despite enduring financial hardship, a broken marriage, and the deaths of her son, her daughter, and her two eldest grandsons, Eliza’s riveting letters attest to her intelligence, grace, and persistence as she moved across the world in search of self-sufficiency.
About the Author
Lissa Paul is Professor of Education at Brock University and the author of The Children’s Book Business: Lessons from the Long Eighteenth Century.
