2007/05/03 by Alan H. Cadwallader · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment #American Constitutional Law and Politics
paper · doi:10.1177/1740355307077933
openalex publication_date 2007/05/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
ABSTRACT Anonymity is a feature of the explosion of publications in nineteenthcentury England. Its motivations were variegated just as efforts to expose an anonymous author were also driven by a variety of agendas. One of the longest retentions of anonymity attached to a work that profoundly disturbed Victorian religiosity was the threevolume book titled Supernatural Religion . The Dublin Divinity Professor, George Salmon's private correspondence with Bishop J.B. Lightfoot near the end of Lightfoot's life posited the author as a woman, Mrs Humphry Ward. An analysis of Salmon's letters is set into the context of the private and public writings of key protagonists in the debates, and reveals deep-seated attitudes about gender, learning, writing, national identity, morality and anonymity in some elite intellectual circles of the society and church of the time.