She has constructed a narrative that draws upon the recent literature on women's imperial activities and experiences. This is reflected in her chapter on imperialism. In this survey text, the author has effectively incorporated and synthesized the new scholarship in women's and gender history. In this and other instances, Steinbach has nicely balanced information and analysis of the social prescriptions for women with their actual lived experience. Of related interest is an excellent chapter on the extensive extra-parliamentary activity undertaken by women associated with Liberal, Conservative and Radical groups. Others became involved in feminist campaigns for access to education, employment and the vote. They were silent partners in their husbands' work and engaged in philanthropic activities and even paid employment outside the home. They did engage in these activities but also, as she clearly demonstrates, in a whole host of other activities. This comes through clearly, for example, in her treatment of separate sphere ideology and its relegation of middle-class women to the private sphere and the tasks of household management and childbearing and rearing. Steinbach has created a nuanced and sophisticated text that illustrates the consonance and dissonance between gender and women's lived experiences. She also aims to evaluate changes and continuities in women's lives through an analysis of developments in employment, sexuality, religion, education, imperialism and politics.
It draws on and analyzes 'the ideas about gender with which nineteenth century women lived, with the variety of social, economic, political, legal, cultural, religious, and other pressures brought to bear on women, and with women's responses to those challenges'(4). The best of the recent scholarship, she notes, has attempted to combine women's and gender history and she intends to follow that approach in this ambitious work. The former sought to uncover and document women's lives and experiences while the latter focused on analysis of language and texts to demonstrate the ways in which gender was socially constructed. She distinguishes between the 'women's history' approach of the 1960s and 1970s and the 'gender history' approach of the 1980s.
In the opening pages of her book, Susie Steinbach provides an overview and assessment of the theoretical approaches that scholars have adopted in their studies of nineteenth-century English women's history.
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