Faith, Duty, and the Power of Mind
The Cloughs and their Circle, 1820–1960

This book tells the story of an English middle-class family and their fortunes.

Gill Sutherland (Author)

9780521861557, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 March 2006

278 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.54 kg

Review of the hardback: 'fascinating… Gillian Sutherland brings out skilfully the different temperaments and characters of her two subjects… Based on meticulous scholarship, her book can also beguile the reader with lively vignettes of Victorian and Edwardian domestic life.' The Times Literary Supplement

Attractively illustrated and engagingly written, this book tells the story of an English middle-class family and their fortunes. At its centre are two women: Anne Jemima Clough and her niece, Blanche Athena Clough. Their experiences show the particular vulnerability of middle-class women to economic reverse; and as first and fourth principals of Newnham College, Cambridge, their lives and work enact the revolution in women's education which allowed women too, at last to enter professional occupations and construct their own economic lifelines. Anne Jemima's brother and Blanche Athena's father was the poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, who lost his Christian faith painfully and publicly at the end of the 1840s. Yet loss of faith did not free these generations from a sense of duty. Rather it strengthened that sense, which fed in turn into the ethic and rhetoric of service which marked English professional life.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Family trees
Introduction
1. Childhood and Charleston
2. 'A land...with strong foes beset'
3. Confirming a vocation
4. Family duty
5. The beginnings of Newnham
6. Enter Blanche Athena Clough
7. 'An ought which has to be reckoned with'
8. Re-grouping
9. War and its consequences
10. Salvage operations
11. Retirement
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1]