Synopses & Reviews
"Koven's beautifully written and exquisitely researched book illuminates, with brilliance and great perception, issues of class, capitalism, empire, gender, and love in early twentieth century Britain."
--Jane Shaw, Stanford University"A brilliantly told tale of the unlikely love of two women divided by class but empowered by the ideals and practice of radical Christianity. This 'intimate history' transforms conventional narratives about charity, class, gender, and labor in the early twentieth century."--Lynn Hollen Lees, University of Pennsylvania
"Seth Koven's luminous account of the unlikely chemistry between Muriel Lester (self-abasing slumming lady) and Nellie Dowell (self-improving match factory girl) sheds new light on their shared milieu of Edwardian Christian radicalism: a counterculture of religious modernism founded on a theology of love, with revolutionary opportunities for pacifism, feminism, and anti-imperialism. A rare and brilliant history of the ethical subject."--Leela Gandhi, Brown University
"This powerful, moving, and innovative book tells the story of the relationship between two women--one a 'grande dame of global pacifism and social justice' and the other a 'Cockney cosmopolitan' who worked as a match girl in the United Kingdom and abroad. Koven brilliantly achieves exactly what he sets out to do: dissolve the boundaries between 'lives' and 'histories.'"--Deborah Epstein Nord, Princeton University
"This is a beautifully written and researched book, one that will stand as one of the best books in modern British history for years to come. The Match Girl and the Heiress is destined to become an instant classic. There is no other book like it."--Sharon Marcus, author of Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England
"How ought one to live in a society defined by inequality? Through his subjects, Nellie Dowell and Muriel Lester, Koven tells a detective story of the heart with deep resonance for today's debates about poverty and wealth, class and empire, Christianity and capitalism, gender formation and same-sex desire, the welfare state and voluntarism. The Match Girl and the Heiress is a methodologically and conceptually inspiring work, with a fine sense of empathy, balanced by shrewdly calibrated assessments of motives and consequences."--Deborah Cohen, author of Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain
Review
"Koven demonstrates how these women changed the world's attitude toward the poor."--Kirkus
Review
"Rutgers University historian Koven (Slumming) has fashioned a scholarly yet highly readable jewel that tackles the big issues of early-20th-century England in an intimate way. Through the lives of Muriel Lester and Nellie Dowell, he brilliantly illuminates the growth of global capitalism, a revolutionary 'God is love' Christian theology, war and pacifism, feminism and sexuality, and class and gender relations."--Publishers Weekly, starred review
Review
"Koven's book sets Nellie and Muriel's relationship in the context of the religion and politics of their era. . . . [T]he most memorable parts are about the unique relationship between these two women. It also serves as a timely reminder of how cruel life was for the poor when there was no welfare state to act as a safety net."--Rachel Trethewey, Independent
Review
"Koven's book sensitively uses a personal relationship to examine both the hopes and the failures of the attempts to cross class boundaries at a time and place where they ruled supreme."--Margaret Quamme, Columbus Dispatch
Review
"The Match Girl and the Heiress is a tale of two intertwined lives, but it is also a story of many places, thoughtfully and richly realized. . . . At the heart of this excellent work is an engrossing, sensitive, and thoughtful story of history, theology, politics, and genuine love."--James Norton, Christian Science Monitor
Review
"In The Match Girl and the Heiress, inspired by a cache of private writings that reveal a profound relationship between two women activists, [Koven] delves deep into the historical record to build an intriguing story of cross-class devotion--between the social reformer Muriel Lester and 'a half-orphaned Cockney' factory worker named Nellie Dowell."--Nina Burleigh, New York Times Book Review
Review
"Seth Koven's new book is a bold, brilliant and deeply moving account of [Lester's and Dowell's] contrasting lives. . . . It is Koven's evident admiration for the imagination and conviction involved in the struggle to live ethically that makes this book such a terrific read."--Nadia Valman, Times Higher Education
Review
"Seth Coven who has poured considerable research into this work, has given us much food for thought. . . . The Match Girl And The Heiress deserves a thorough read and is both entertaining and thought-provoking."--Clare O'Beara, Fresh Fiction
Review
Winner of the 2015 NAVSA Best book of the Year Award, North American Victorian Studies Association
Review
"[M]eticulously researched."--Caroline Moorhead, Times Literary Supplement
Review
"The Match Girl and the Heiress . . . is remarkable reading."--John Rennie, East End Life
Synopsis
How two extraordinary women crossed the Victorian class divide to put Christian teachings into practice in the slums of East London
Nellie Dowell was a match factory girl in Victorian London who spent her early years consigned to orphanages and hospitals. Muriel Lester, the daughter of a wealthy shipbuilder, longed to be free of the burden of money and possessions. Together, these unlikely soulmates sought to remake the world according to their own utopian vision of Christ's teachings. The Match Girl and the Heiress paints an unforgettable portrait of their late-nineteenth-century girlhoods of wealth and want, and their daring twentieth-century experiments in ethical living in a world torn apart by war, imperialism, and industrial capitalism.
In this captivating book, Seth Koven chronicles how each traveled the globe--Nellie as a spinster proletarian laborer, Muriel as a well-heeled tourist and revered Christian peacemaker, anticolonial activist, and humanitarian. Koven vividly describes how their lives crossed in the slums of East London, where they inaugurated a grassroots revolution that took the Sermon on the Mount as a guide to achieving economic and social justice for the dispossessed. Koven shows how they devoted themselves to Kingsley Hall--Gandhi's London home in 1931 and Britain's first "people's house" founded on the Christian principles of social sharing, pacifism, and reconciliation--and sheds light on the intimacies and inequalities of their loving yet complicated relationship.
The Match Girl and the Heiress probes the inner lives of these two extraordinary women against the panoramic backdrop of shop-floor labor politics, global capitalism, counterculture spirituality, and pacifist feminism to expose the wounds of poverty and neglect that Christian love could never heal.
Synopsis
Nellie Dowell was a match factory girl in Victorian London who spent her early years consigned to orphanages and hospitals. Muriel Lester, the daughter of a wealthy shipbuilder, longed to be free of the burden of money and possessions. Together, these unlikely soulmates sought to remake the world according to their own utopian vision of Christ's teachings.
The Match Girl and the Heiress paints an unforgettable portrait of their late-nineteenth-century girlhoods of wealth and want, and their daring twentieth-century experiments in ethical living in a world torn apart by war, imperialism, and industrial capitalism.
In this captivating book, Seth Koven chronicles how each traveled the globe--Nellie as a spinster proletarian laborer, Muriel as a well-heeled tourist and revered Christian peacemaker, anticolonial activist, and humanitarian. Koven vividly describes how their lives crossed in the slums of East London, where they inaugurated a grassroots revolution that took the Sermon on the Mount as a guide to achieving economic and social justice for the dispossessed. Koven shows how they devoted themselves to Kingsley Hall--Gandhi's London home in 1931 and Britain's first "people's house" founded on the Christian principles of social sharing, pacifism, and reconciliation--and sheds light on the intimacies and inequalities of their loving yet complicated relationship.
The Match Girl and the Heiress probes the inner lives of these two extraordinary women against the panoramic backdrop of shop-floor labor politics, global capitalism, counterculture spirituality, and pacifist feminism to expose the wounds of poverty and neglect that Christian love could never heal.
Synopsis
"This is a beautifully written and researched book, one that will stand as one of the best books in modern British history for years to come.
The Match Girl and the Heiress is destined to become an instant classic. There is no other book like it."
--Sharon Marcus, author of Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England"How ought one to live in a society defined by inequality? Through his subjects, Nellie Dowell and Muriel Lester, Koven tells a detective story of the heart with deep resonance for today's debates about poverty and wealth, class and empire, Christianity and capitalism, gender formation and same-sex desire, the welfare state and voluntarism. The Match Girl and the Heiress is a methodologically and conceptually inspiring work, with a fine sense of empathy, balanced by shrewdly calibrated assessments of motives and consequences."--Deborah Cohen, author of Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain
About the Author
Seth Koven teaches history at Rutgers University. He is the author of Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton) and the coeditor of Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
CHAPTER ONE
Victorian Childhoods and Two Victorian Children 21
The Education of Nellie Dowell 23
The Apprenticeship of Muriel Lester 57
Conclusions: The Challenges of Unlearning 75
CHAPTER TWO
Capitalism, from Below and Down Under: The Global Traffic in Matches and Match Girls 77
The Work of the Match Girl in Victorian Culture 79
How Match Factory Women Became Match Girls 85
Match Girls' Militant: Why the Bell's Match Factory Strike of 1893/94 Failed 95
Metropolitan Match Girls Abroad: Immoral Circulations of Matches and Match Girls 104
Conclusions 130
CHAPTER THREE
"Being a Christian" in Edwardian Britain 135
"God Is Love" 137
Foundational Fables, Ethical Awakening 154
God's Empire 171
From Paupers to Citizens 177
Conclusions 181
CHAPTER FOUR
Body Biographies in War and Peace 184
Taking Nellie's Temperature 186
Narrating Nellie 190
"You don't look near so well really" 201
Muriel Lester's Spiritual Therapeutics 212
Bodies at War 219
Grammars of Difference, Erotics of Illness in Nellie's Letters to Muriel 226
"Why it is I don't know" 237
Conclusions: Dialects for the Heart 252
CHAPTER FIVE
Love and Christian Revolution 256
Henry Lester's Gift 261
Feminisms at War 274
Reconciliation and Christian Revolution 288
"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you" 301
Telling the Truth, Becoming an Heiress 315
Conclusions 328
Afterlives 330
Manuscript Sources 353
Notes 357
Index 435