GRAND, Sarah, pseud. (Frances Elizabeth McFall) The Beth Book; being a study from the life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a woman of genius. FIRST EDITION. William Heinemann. 1898
Half title, 8pp ads + 16pp cata. (1897); prelims sl. browned. Orig. green cloth, blocked & lettered in gilt; dulled, spine rubbed at head & tail. Owner's inscription, March 1903.
¶Not in Sadleir or Wolff. This was one of the most influential of the 'New Woman' novels which highlighted and challenged the sexual inequalities that existed in Britian towards the end of the 19th century. Grand's fourth novel, The Beth Book is a thinly veiled autobiographical work which emphasises the difficulties women routinely faced in male-dominated Victorian society. All the themes that punctuated the author's own life are present: a difficult childhood in Northern Ireland dominated by a position of subservience to older brothers, an alcoholic father, an inadequate education, a loveless marriage to an older man and the ensuing scandal caused by leaving him, a desire to write and become politicised, and involvement in the suffrage movement. See Sutherland.