# Daughters of Genius

Engraved by J C Buere
Josephine.
Daughters of Genius:
A
Series of Sketches
OF
AUTHORS, ARTISTS, REFORMERS, AND HEROINES,
QUEENS, PRINCESSES, AND WOMEN OF
SOCIETY, WOMEN ECCENTRIC
AND PECULIAR.
FROM THE MOST RECENT AND AUTHENTIC SOURCES.
By James Parton,
AUTHOR OF
LIFE AND TIMES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, LIFE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, LIFE OF VOLTAIRE, GENERAL BUTLER IN NEW ORLEANS, LIFE OF AARON BURR, PEOPLE'S BOOK
OF BIOGRAPHY, LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON, ETC.
Illustrated.
PHILADELPHIA :
HUBBARD BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.
1887.
Copyright, by Hubbard Brothers, 1885.
PREFACE.
THE most important result of the better civilization of our time is the increased power of women. We know that in limited spheres their influence was always incalculably great; but now, without losing their ascendancy at home, they find a career in many of the trades, most of the professions, and all the arts. In those of the arts which give the most lively pleasure and reach the greatest number of persons, namely, fiction and the drama, women, in our day, have attained the first rank, and have made the first rank higher. As reformers and world-improvers, what men have surpassed the single-eyed and courageous devotion of such women as Miss Martineau?
We can set no limit to their future achievements except those which nature herself has established. So long as the chief business of every state was to defend itself against armed encroachment, all gifts and all character were of necessity subordinate to masculine force. Women were "the subject sex." The peace and safety resulting from the union of many states, and to become universal through federation and arbitration, will still further reduce the importance of muscle and brawn. The time is not very distant when the ballot will have rendered the bullet, not monstrous merely, but ridiculous, and when there will be no "campaigns" except those of the blest American pattern, fought out in the pleasant autumn days with speeches, processions, fireworks, and bands of music.
​In this volume are presented some examples of women who have risen to the better chance afforded them through the general amelioration of manners. The most fortunate of them have been cruelly obstructed by the large remainder of barbarism which exists in every community, and they have done their work in the teeth of every conceivable disadvantage. They have had to snatch it from a cross-fire of hostile circumstances. That Charlotte Brontë, that Mary Anne Evans, that Mrs. Stowe, should have been able to exercise their beautiful talents at all, was wonderful. That they should have employed them so triumphantly, is a kind of miracle, at which we can but stand amazed. In reading of their exploits we perceive that the Maid of Orleans was one of their kind, and saved her country by the exercise of qualities akin to theirs.
One pleasing duty remains to me. In the preparation of this volume, I have received the most essential and efficient assistance from my beloved niece, Miss Ethel Parton. Many of these articles I could not have done without her aid, which was rendered with a ready tact and sympathetic zeal beyond her twenty years, though they were to be expected from her lineage. Whenever the reader comes upon a passage that betrays a finer insight and a happier touch than ordinarily appears in the work, he will know to whom to attribute it.
The chapters on Queen Victoria and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, subsequently added, are from the pen of Prof. John P. Lamberton, of Philadelphia.
CONTENTS.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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