Mona Wilson
![Youngish white woman with dark hair sitting at a bureau](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/19/Mona-wilson-1911.jpg/280px-Mona-wilson-1911.jpg)
Mona Wilson (29 May 1872 – 26 October 1954) was a British public servant and author. After voluntary social work, seeking to improve the conditions of working women in deprived industrial areas, she joined the civil service in 1911, and became one of the first women in Britain to earn equal pay with her male colleagues. She left the civil service in 1919 and pursued a literary career.
Wilson is known for her scholarly work, including literary biographies of
Early years
Wilson was born in Hillmorton Road,
Social work
Wilson became interested in social and industrial problems, and joined the
![street scene showind deprived London area](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Dorset-street-1902.jpg/220px-Dorset-street-1902.jpg)
In 1902 Wilson took part in an investigation into social conditions in West Ham in the East End of London, and in 1904, with Mary Lily Walker, she led an inquiry into housing, income, and employment in Dundee. It covered health, housing conditions, family incomes and employment, and was, according to The Times, one of the most exhaustive social studies ever undertaken.[1] The investigation found that Dundee's industry relied on cheap female labour:
The work took its toll on Wilson. She described Dundee as "the most depressing place you can possibly imagine", and was not confident that the ills revealed in the report would be adequately remedied.[3] She was sceptical about the value of votes for women: "I have always found the ordinary middle class woman the worst enemy of the questions I care about which does not induce me to be particularly anxious that she should have a vote."[3]
Public servant
![Middle-aged white woman with centre-parted dark hair](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/89/Mona-Wilson-1917.png/90px-Mona-Wilson-1917.png)
In 1909 the
In 1917 Wilson was seconded to the newly formed
Literature
1909 to 1930
Wilson's literary career had begun before she became a civil servant. In 1909 under the pen name Monica Moore, she wrote a short story, "The Ordeal", printed in The Nation; it featured the miseries of mill workers.[7] The following year she published a novel, The Story of Rosalind Retold from her Diary, a tale about of a talented woman writer and artist whose short life was divided between the arts and social work. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Margaret Carter describes the heroine as "a restless and haunted woman, whose fall from her galloping horse may have been her means of joining her recently deceased young son".[8]
In 1924 Wilson made her first sortie into literary biography, with These Were Muses, a brief introduction to the works of nine 18th- and 19th-century women writers whose renown, according to Wilson's preface, "has faded or … remained unfulfilled." Wilson observes that her book is "not intended for the student, but for the curious general reader who will have come across the names of the subjects of these papers in histories or literature."
Wilson's first full-length biography, The Life of William Blake, was published in 1927, the centenary of the subject's death. Wilson concentrated on Blake's life-story and his writings, although she did not neglect his paintings.
In the late 1920s Wilson corresponded on a literary topic with the writer G. M. Young, who before their retirements from the public service had been a colleague at the Ministry of Reconstruction. She asked him down for the weekend to her house at Oare, near Marlborough, Wiltshire. As their publisher, Rupert Hart-Davis, put it in 1956: "To cut a long story short, he stayed there for twenty-five years, until M.W. died a year or two ago. There was, so far as I know, no just cause or impediment why they shouldn't have married, but they just didn't. I'm sure their relationship was entirely intellectual and companionable."[13]
1930s
After a four-year gap Wilson's next book was a study of
In 1932 Wilson was made an Associate of Newnham College.[1] In the same year she produced the first of two books for the "Short Biographies" series of her publisher, Peter Davies. Her Queen Elizabeth, a 180-page study of Elizabeth I, was moderately well reviewed. The New York Times thought Wilson's attempt to disentangle Elizabeth's personality from her actions led to "an outline portrait made of broken lines that do not quite sufficiently explain themselves".[16] The Spectator commented, "No one, after reading Miss Wilson's book, will fail to understand how it was that Elizabeth's reign is one of the most famous in English History, and still the most glamorous of all."[17] Wilson's Queen Victoria the following year was politely received, with reservations as to whether the author gave her subject enough credit for "native intelligence and political common sense".[18]
Wilson contributed a chapter on holidays and travel to the two-volume Early Victorian England edited by Young and published in 1934.
Jane Austen and Some Contemporaries (1938) comprises biographies of Jane Austen and seven other female writers of the period.[24][n 4] The book was described by The Manchester Guardian as very thorough in its understanding of the people of Austen's time, though a little difficult to follow for a reader unfamiliar with the time period.[26] In this book, Wilson ranks Austen as at least the equal, if not the superior of Mary Wollstonecraft in advocacy of equal rights for women.[27] Wilson's biographer Elaine Harrison comments that this demonstrates Wilson's "preference for a more subtle advocacy of women's claims for equal consideration".[3]
Last years
![Portrait of Dr Johnson, in 18th-century big wig](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Samuel_Johnson_by_John_Opie.jpg/170px-Samuel_Johnson_by_John_Opie.jpg)
By the end of the Second World War most of Wilson's books were out of print. Hart-Davis, who already published Young's books, commissioned revised editions of The Life of William Blake (1948) and Sir Philip Sidney (1950), and Wilson's last book, an anthology, Johnson – Prose and Poetry (1950). This was a 900-page collection of
Wilson died at a nursing home in Putney, London, on 26 October 1954 at the age of 82.[3]
Publications
- Our Industrial Laws: Working Women in Factories, Workshops, Shops and Laundries and How to Help Them. London: Duckworth. 1899. OCLC 923922965.
- These Were Muses. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. 1924. OCLC 884049119.
- The Life of William Blake. London: The Nonsuch Press. 1927. OCLC 973439003.
- Sir Philip Sidney. London: Duckworth. 1931. OCLC 753238584.
- Elizabeth, Queen of England. Edinburgh: Peter Davies Ltd. 1932. OCLC 606433685.
- Victoria, Queen of Great Britain. London: P. Davies Ltd. 1933. OCLC 2194597.
- Jane Austen and Some Contemporaries. London: Cresset Press. 1938. OCLC 222021464.
- Johnson – Prose and Poetry. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. 1950. OCLC 852820674.
Notes, references and sources
Notes
- ^ Annie Wilson died in 1879, aged 42, and James Wilson remarried in 1883. There were four children of the second marriage, including the politician Arnold Wilson and the singer Steuart Wilson.[2]
- ^ Equal pay for men and women in comparable jobs was not the norm in the British civil service until 1961.[6]
- W. A. Darlington, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, James Laver, George Santayana, John Sparrow, Stephen Spender, John Summerson and Rebecca West.[23]
- ^ The contemporaries, each with a chapter of her own, were Mary Martha Butt, Eliza Fletcher, Harriet Grote, Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Mary Somerville, Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna and Anne Woodrooffe.[25]
References
- ^ a b c d e "Obituary: Miss Mona Wilson – Administration and Literature", The Times, 30 October 1954, p. 8
- ^ "Rev. James Maurice Wilson", Ancestry.co.uk. Retrieved 16 July 2021 (subscription required)
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harrison Elaine Wilson, Mona (1872–1954), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 14 July 2021 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- ^ "Social Conditions of Industry in Dundee and in Blackburn", The Times, 30 September 1905, p. 3
- ^ "The Trade Boards Act", The Times, 22 October 1909, p. 11
- ^ Thane, p. 109
- ^ Whitehead, p. 73
- ^ a b Carter, p. 268
- ^ Wilson (1924), preface
- ^ "The Life of William Blake by William Blake, Mona Wilson", The Burlington Magazine, June 1933, p. 48 (subscription required)
- ^ Matthews, Herbert L. "Blake's Life Was a Work of Art", The New York Times, 30 October 1927, p. BR8
- ^ "Blake". The Guardian. 1949. p. 3. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Lyttelton and Hart-Davis, pp. 132–133
- ^ Carter, p. 270
- ^ a b "Sir Philip Sidney", The Times, 19 May 1931, p. 21
- ProQuest 100802144(subscription required)
- ^ Quoted in "Books", The Times, 12 August 1932, p. 15
- ^ Carter, p. 272
- ^ " Early Victorian England, 1830–1865", WorldCat. Retrieved 14 July 2021
- ^ "Grand tour; a journey in the tracks of the age of aristocracy", WorldCat. Retrieved 15 July 2021
- ^ Laver, James (1 December 1935). "Grand Tour". The Observer. p. 23. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Dobrée, pp. 560–573
- ^ Dobrée, contents pages
- ^ Hayward, John (21 August 1938). "Pre-Victorian Girlhood". The Observer. p. 5. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Wilson (1938), contents page
- ^ Stocks, Mary (6 September 1938). "In the Days of the Regency". The Guardian. p. 5. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Wilson (1938), p. ix
Sources
- Carter, Margaret (1995). "Wilson, Mona". In Steven Serafin (ed.). Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 149. Detroit: Gale. ISBN 978-0-8103-5710-5.
- Dobrée, Bonamy (1937). From Anne to Victoria;. London: Cassell. OCLC 22635473.
- ISBN 978-0-7195-3478-2.
- Thane, Pat (2010). Unequal Britain: Equalities in Britain since 1945. London: Continuum. ISBN 978-1-84706-298-7.
- Whitehead, Angus (2012). "Blake 2.0". In Steve Clark; Tristanne Connolly; Jason Whittaker (eds.). William Blake in Twentieth-Century Art, Music and Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-28033-5.
- Wilson, Mona (1924). These Were Muses. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. OCLC 3352056.
- Wilson, Mona (1938). Jane Austen and Some Contemporaries. London: Cresset Press. OCLC 1131163851.
- Young, G. M. (1934). Early Victorian England, 1830–1865. London: Oxford University Press. OCLC 977600890.