Netta Syrett, The Victorians (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1915), 45—7

Abstract Netta Syrett (1865—1945), a teacher who wrote children’s books as well as thirty-eight novels and numerous short stories, is most famous today as a ‘New Woman’ writer of the 1890s. Syrett’s publisher, Fisher Unwin, was known for its new and ‘advanced’ writing and The Victorians, a largely autobiographical novel centring on the changing roles of women at the end the century, shows Syrett’s resistance to dominant stereotypes on many levels. The following extract is set in the early 1880s when the heroine, Rose, is 9 years old. The Play Grammar was a real book, by the children’s author Julia Corner, published in 1848.