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Women and Belief, 1852–1928


Julia Kavanagh (1824–77) was born in Thurles, Tipperary, Ireland, to Morgan Peter and Bridget (née Fitzpatrick) Kavanagh on 7 January 1824. The family relocated to France during the early years of Kavanagh’s childhood and she was raised and educated in Paris and Normandy before moving to London in 1844. Her experiences in France as well as her Catholic faith proved a key influence in her writing: a number of her novels are set in France and her interest in French literature and culture is further reflected in her works of non-fiction, Woman in France during the Eighteenth Century (1850) and French Women of Letters (1862). Kavanagh’s father, himself an author of poetry, novels and a number of poorly received texts on the subject of linguistics, abandoned his family in the 1840s. Following this, Kavanagh took up writing in order to provide for herself and her mother and she did so for the rest of life, remaining unmarried throughout. She experienced poor health, suffering from neuralgia for many years, but continued to write: her final work, Forget-Me-Nots, was published posthumously in 1878. She died suddenly at the age of 53 on 28 October 1877 in Nice, southern France, where she had moved with her mother some years previously. She was survived by her mother and obituaries appeared in a number of leading periodicals of the day, including The Athenaeum and The Argosy. Victoria Magazine declared that ‘By the death of Miss Julia Kavanagh […] English literature has been deprived of an accomplished novelist and skilled writer of biography’, while The International Review mourned the loss of ‘a careful and conscientious artist’.

Volume Contents

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    Front Matter
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    Introduction to Volume I By Jessica Cox; Nadine Muller
  • Women of Christianity, exemplary for acts of piety and charity ... with portraits (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1852) By Julia Kavanagh
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      Preface
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      Introduction
    • Period the First: The Ronan Empire
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        Chapter I
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        Chapter II
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        Chapter III
    • Period the Second: The Middle Ages
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        Chapter IV
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        Chapter V
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        Chapter VI
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        Chapter VII
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        Chapter VIII
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        Chapter IX
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        Chapter X
    • Period the Third: The Seventeenth Century
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        Chapter XI
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        Chapter XII
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        Chapter XIII
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        Chapter XIV
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        Chapter XV
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        Chapter XVI
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        Chapter XVII
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        Chapter XVIII
    • Fourth Period: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
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        Chapter XIX
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        Chapter XX
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        Chapter XXI
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        Chapter XXII
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        Chapter XXIII
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        Chapter XXIV
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        Chapter XXV
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        Chapter XXVI
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        Chapter XXVII
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      Conclusion
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      Index