Modern Women and What Is Said of Them reprints a celebrated and controversial series of articles from the Saturday Review of 1868, including the notorious “Girl of the Period.” The pieces, associated with the writer Eliza Lynn Linton, sharply criticise the manners, dress, and aspirations of the “modern” young Victorian woman, contrasting her unfavourably with an idealised womanhood of the past.
Provocative, sometimes harsh, and widely debated in their day, these essays became a flashpoint in the period’s arguments over the changing roles of women. They are striking today both as polished examples of magazine controversy and as documents of anti-feminist reaction at a moment of social change. For readers studying Victorian gender debates, this collection offers vivid, unfiltered evidence of the cultural anxieties stirred by women’s growing independence.