I do not intend to present “New Woman Fiction” and feminist utopian fiction of the Victorian period as universally one and the same; the naming of this anthology is intentional in that sense (New Woman and Feminist Utopian Fiction). First, and most simply, many included texts date from prior to 1894 when Sarah Grand coined the term New Woman. That said, most texts come from the latter third of the 19th century, when mass publications began to raise what Sally Ledger calls “the woman question”, referring to increased interest in the women’s rights movement and individual women’s independence (Ledger 3). (A few included texts--Cranford (1853) and Account of an Expedition to the Interior of New Holland (1837)--date from slightly earlier. I have included both texts as they present similar themes as women’s utopian fiction from the more traditional New Woman period).

Secondly, much of New Woman fiction, particularly that which receives much critical attention, is not necessarily utopian or speculative fiction. I do not intend to suggest that New Woman utopian fiction is wholly ignored; certainly many of the critical texts I am using examine Corbett, Dixie, Schreiner, and Clapperton in particular, and even lesser known writers like Mears, Spence, and Dugdale are situated as New Woman fiction by some critics. Still, general critical works addressing the New Woman and associated fiction tend to minimize the utopian subgenre. Ledger, for example, writing in The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle, only addresses “the uses of Utopia” in a chapter regarding The New Woman and Socialism, using Clapperton and others to suggest that New Woman writers were interested in participating in the more masculine Victorian socialist utopia genre, dominated by male writers like Morris (50-58). Likewise, Ann Ardis, in New Women, New Novels, does not truly address New Women’s use of utopia; she discusses Dixie and Clapperton, but, much like Ledger, frames them as part of a larger discussion about socialism and New Woman, not addressing the significance of New Woman writers developing idealized, speculative worlds in their own fiction. Similarly, writers who do focus more on late 19th century Victorian feminist utopias do not always examine their context of such works within the New Woman movement (which does differ from more general feminist movements; I will discuss the contrast shortly). Nan Albinski, writing in Women’s Utopias In British and American Fiction, addresses the context and social ramifications of the works of Corbett, Dixie, and others, but tends to associate them exclusively with the umbrella “feminist movement” or “women’s right” in general--not the specific “New Woman” movement. Angelique Richardson does present a sinister undercurrent supporting eugenics within the New Woman movement in Love and Eugenics In The Late Nineteenth Century, but does not examine how such an idea functions in utopian literature. Again, I do not mean to suggest that late 19th century utopian fiction has never been clearly associated with the New Woman ideal, but it appears clear that major writers regarding either topic do not always connect them.

Thus, one of the primary goals of this anthology is to better situate the utopian novel as a subgenre of New Woman writings. To do so, I would like to first define and examine the New Woman concept for my purposes. As stated previously, Sarah Grand coined the term in 1894, after, in the words of Ledger, Ouida “extrapolated” it from Grand’s “The New Aspect of the Woman Question” (9).