Bodichon, Barbara Leigh ___ 1827-1891 ___ American ___ writer, reformer

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was an illegitimate child born in Whatlington, Sussex, to Anne Longden, a working class girl. Her father, Benjamin Leigh Smith, an MP and the son of an MP, rented a cottage for Anne, and visited her daily. After the birth of a second child, the four of them went to the US for two years, and, on their return, with a third child, Anne and Benjamin lived together openly, and had two more children. Anne died in 1834. Benjamin then continued to bring up his children in an unconventional manner. When Barbara reached 21, her father gave her investments amounting to an annual income of £300, as well as the deeds of a school in Westminster his father had founded. With her unusual background, Barbara eschewed high society preferring to pursue artistic and social objectives, particularly with regard to schooling methods and married women's property rights. This latter gave her a prominent place in the history of women's rights. While visiting Algeria in 1856, she met Eugene Bodichon, a French physician some 17 years her senior and an anti-slavery campaigner. They married the following year. During her honeymoon to the US she kept a diary. She remained an energetic campaigner until suffering a stroke in the late 1870s.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1857-1858 ___ social travel love/sex US

WEB TEXT LINKS
several good extracts
 

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Girton College Library, University of Cambridge

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
An American Diary, 1857-8
 

May 2005, September 2008
Please email if you have any corrections, additions or comments, or if you've found the site useful. Thank you.

IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.