Women and Philosophy of Art in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract

This chapter introduces the seven women that this book is about: Anna Barbauld, Joanna Baillie, Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Frances Power Cobbe, Emilia Dilke, and Vernon Lee. Nineteenth-century British print and periodical culture enabled these women to publish influential and authoritative accounts of art despite certain sexist restrictions that they faced. They focused above all on art’s relations with morality and religion, but also tackled other philosophical questions regarding the arts. Like many of their male contemporaries, they produced a kind of philosophy of art which was interdisciplinary and shaded into artistic practice. The chapter then explains the book’s methodology and relation to existing scholarship. Part of the methodology is to reconstruct the intellectual relations amongst these seven women, locating women in relation to their female influences as well as male ones. Finally, the chapter explains the choice to concentrate on these seven women.