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Cover of Women of Christianity

Women of Christianity

The Pioneer 1852 Narrative of Women's Lives in the Christian Tradition

  • History & Biography
  • Publisher: Wipf and Stock
  • Published: 2006

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Publisher's Description

In early 1852, Irish novelist and women of letters Julia Kavanagh (1824-1877) produced her Women of Christianity, Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity. It was the first volume of its kind attempting to tell the story of women remarkable for character, intellect, and excellence, who had flourished under the fostering influence of the Christian faith from New Testament to her own. Though subsequent developments in critical historography and feminist theory have transformed the disciplines of women's studies and Church history in recent generations, Kavanagh's pioneer work deserves long overdue attention in both fields. With skill and conviction offering a narrative of women's lives across the ages, she finds her own rightful place within that Christian Tradition. Some of the lives featured in Women of Christianity: - Vibia Peupeta, early North African Christian Martyr - Macrina the Elder, brider of family and monastic community - Teresa of Avila, Carmelite nun and author of The Interior Castle - Elizabeth Fry, English Quaker and pioneer of prison reform


Endorsements (2)

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

James D. Smith III

“Julia Kavanagh has much in common with many women writers today. Although not considered a 'political writer' she was astutely aware of the double standards of her time. Her work bears testimony to the many anomalies and contradictions concerning women's subjectivity and as such she draws on the very core of sexual politics . . . she is concerned with women's experience and works they produced in a world which, for the most part, saw women as adjunctival to male experience. I would argue, nevertheless, that because she is writing about women who previously had each been seen only in relation to more 'historically illustrious men' Kavanagh offers a significant contribution to women's history.”

Eileen Fauset

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