George Egerton by Isobel Sigley

George Egerton by Isobel Sigley

George Egerton: Terra Incognitas is the first published work to focus solely on Egerton and her literary legacy. It covers the range and extent of Egerton's life and literary career from her emergence into the milieu of London publishing in 1893 to her dramatic works (both original and in translation) and their performance history into the 1920s. This work is an essential addition to ongoing recovery projects and is the first to focus on her 'lost' and unpublished works, mentorship of younger writers, her experiments with characterisations and themes, sociopolitical stances, innovations with form and content, and ultimately, her literary legacy. In doing so, George Egerton: Terra Incognitas reassesses Egerton's broader contribution to fin-de-siècle and early-twentieth-century literature and drama and repositions her as among the most important of the literary innovators of period, and a noteworthy precursor to later female literary modernisers, including Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf.

Isobel Sigley was awarded a PhD in English from Loughborough University in 2023. Her thesis ‘A (New) Woman’s Touch: Tactility and Feminism in Women’s Fin-de-Siecle Short Fiction, 1880-1930’ examines tactility as a form of feminist praxis within women’s short stories of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. She has published work on George Egerton (2021, VPJF) and Alice Dunbar-Nelson (2024, Journal of Medical Humanities), both of whose works were explored alongside works by Sarah Grand, Kate Chopin, Vernon Lee and Katherine Mansfield within Isobel’s doctoral thesis. Prior to her PhD, Isobel gained an MA in English Literature from Keele University. Isobel first became fascinated by George Egerton when studying for her undergraduate degree at Loughborough University, where the first international conference dedicated to Egerton’s life and works was held in 2017.

Whitney Standlee is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Worcester, and is the author of the monograph Power to Observe: Irish Women Novelists in Britain 1890-1916 (2015) and co-editor (with Anna Pilz) of Irish Women’s Writing 1878-1922: Advancing the Cause of Liberty (2016/paperback 2018), both of which include original research on Egerton. A founding member of the Irish Women’s Writing 1880-1920 Network, she and Pilz are also co-originators and editors of two popular series of online interviews for the network. Her most recent publications include a double issue of English Studies co-edited with Laing, Mooney, Ní Bheacháin, Pilz and Stevens entitled Connecting Voices: An Introduction to Irish Women Writers’ Collaborations and Networks, 1880-1940 (2023).