What's New: July 2024
July 11, 2024
Welcome to the 112th update of the Oxford DNB, which adds eleven new articles, containing nine new lives, with a special focus on women and needlework and women in business. The update also adds nine portrait likenesses. From July 2024 the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford DNB) offers biographies of 65,269 women and men who have shaped the British past, contained in 62,997 articles. 12,225 biographies include a portrait image of the subject—researched in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery, London.
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Bell, Amy Elizabeth (1859–1920), stockbroker |
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Blencowe, Agnes (1817–1896), embroiderer and co-founder of the Ladies’ Ecclesiastical Embroidery Society |
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Dolby [née Dolan], Anastasia Marie (1823/4–1873), embroiderer and designer |
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Glaister, Elizabeth (1839–1892), author and embroiderer |
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Holmes, Beatrice Gordon (1884–1951), stockbroker and feminist |
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Lambert [married name Sedgwick], Frances (1798–1880), embroiderer, fancy needleworker, and author |
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Murray, Eustace Clare Grenville- [pseuds. the Roving Englishman, the comte de Rethel d’Aragon] (1823–1881), journalist and diplomatist |
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Richards, James Brinsley- [formerly Reginald Temple Strange Clare Grenville-Murray] (1846–1892), journalist |
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Wade, Louisa Anne (1843–1920), principal of the Royal School of Art Needlework |
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Whichelo, Mary Eleanor [Nellie] (1862–1959), head designer of the Royal School of Art Needlework |
Introduction by Lynn Hulse: Women and Needlework
The six needlewomen featured in this month’s Oxford Dictionary of National Biography update (Frances Lambert, Agnes Blencowe, Anastasia Dolby, Elizabeth Glaister, Louisa Wade, and Eleanor Whichelo) and a further two (Jane Gaugain and Letitia Higgin) who will be added next month, are representative of a group of female decorative artists who played a significant role in the development of hand embroidered textiles in nineteenth-century Britain.
The Victorian era has been described as one of the richest and most varied periods in English needlework. Between circa 1830–1870, the principal style of fancy work (as distinct from plain sewing) carried out by middle- and upper-class women was Berlin work, a type of canvas embroidery worked mainly in wools in tent or cross stitch from a design printed on square paper, each square of the pattern representing one square of the canvas. By 1840, around 14,000 designs, including flowers and pictorial images based on famous paintings, were available from Berlin warehouses and fancy repositories or given away in women’s monthly magazines.
Jane Gaugain is known today chiefly as a pioneer of knitting, though she, like Frances Lambert, was also a celebrated teacher of fancy needlework. From their respective shops in Edinburgh and London, both women ran successful businesses that met the growing demand for Berlin work patterns and the materials used to stitch them. Lambert was one of the first authors to publish a series of manuals on the needle arts, beginning in 1842 with The Hand-book of Needlework, which contained detailed instructions for canvas embroidery.
Despite its popularity, Berlin work had many detractors among the exponents of decorative needlework who sought to elevate the embroiderer’s craft from a ‘trifling pastime’ to a serious art form. By the early 1870s, the craze for Berlin work had been displaced by art embroidery.
The revival of decorative needlework in Britain can be traced back to the religious and artistic developments of the 1830s. Catholic emancipation and the rise of the Oxford movement, which promoted the restoration of High Church ideals within the Protestant liturgy, had led to the reintroduction of numerous practices, including the use of embroidered vestments and furnishings. The desire to beautify the fabric of the Church coincided with a resurgence of interest in medieval art and architecture, known as Gothic Revival.
Around the same time, designers and makers were engaged in an economic and aesthetic debate on British design and industry which had failed to keep pace with continental rivals. Among the topics addressed was the indiscriminate use of three-dimensional patterns to ornament two-dimensional surfaces, one of the many criticisms levelled against Berlin work. Conscious of the need to improve standards, formal guidelines for a modern design vocabulary were drawn up that in due course would give rise to the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts movements.
To begin with, the resurgence of decorative needlework found expression in church embroidery. Agnes Blencowe, whose skill is reputed to have rivalled that of the ‘ancient embroideresses’, developed a keen interest in medieval decoration, and in 1848, published a volume of patterns drawn from medieval vestments and furnishings. In 1854, she co-founded the Ladies’ Ecclesiastical Embroidery Society, which supplied cathedrals and parish churches with work inspired by ancient examples or designed by modern architects, including her close friend, the Gothic Revivalist George Edmund Street. Blencowe later became an Anglican nun at St Mary the Virgin in Wantage, Berkshire, where she ran a flourishing embroidery workshop.
By the late 1850s, this new style of church decoration had begun to influence embroidered furnishings for the home. The various styles of secular needlework that emerged during the second half of the nineteenth century drew inspiration from historical and non-Western ornament as well as the natural world and respected the value of handcraftsmanship in an age of industrialisation.Decorative needlework, or art embroidery as it was labelled from the early 1870s, denoted more than a technical knowledge of stitch. For a work to be truly “artistic”, it required invention in the selection and arrangement of colours, the choice of suitable materials and above all, good design based on an appreciation of the intellectual quality of medieval ornament. These essential characteristics were explored in depth by Elizabeth Glaister and her cousin Sarah Mortimer Lockwood in Art Embroidery: A Treatise on the Revived Practice of Decorative Needlework (1878). Glaister was recognised as an authority on the subject, and in 1880, she was commissioned by MacMillan & Co. to produce an advice manual on needlework for their ‘Art at Home’ series, aimed at women with an eye for beauty but limited financial means.
The Arts and Crafts movement provided new opportunities for women to pursue a career as designers and makers. Through the establishment of art schools and female-run embroidery societies like the Royal School of Needlework (RSN), women had access to a professional training that offered a reasonable means of livelihood. Four of the women whose biographies are published this month were employed by the RSN.
One of Lady Victoria Welby’s aims in setting up the RSN in 1872 was to revive the practice of decorative needlework for the home by executing embroideries after medieval designs. To this end, she appointed the Gothic Revivalist Anastasia Dolby, author of Church Embroidery: Ancient and Modern (1867), as Teacher and Superintendent. Dolby was committed to reviving the ‘old’ stitches found in church work and selected the best methods for working them. Over the winter of 1872–73, she and Welby trained the workers to stitch embroidered furnishings using modern and ancient designs. Like Dolby, Louisa Wade, who replaced Welby as Manager (and later Principal) of the RSN in 1874, was trained in the techniques of church embroidery. Under her direction, the School exhibited at several world fairs (Philadelphia (1876), Paris (1878, 1900), Melbourne (1880) and Chicago (1893)), which cemented its position as one of the leading institutions for art embroidery.
Letitia Higgin, who was Wade’s assistant, was entrusted with drafting the RSN’s first guidebook in 1880. The Appendix to her Handbook of Embroidery was primarily a showcase for the RSN’s best designs from some of the leading decorative artists of the day, including William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Walter Crane and Selwyn Image, and by some of the women from its own design studio. Higgin went on to write several articles on the revival of decorative needlework and established the Society of Associated Artists, which provided professional training in dressmaking and millinery.
Eleanor Whichelo, who became head of the RSN studio, was involved in several important commissions, including the coronation requirements for Edward VII, George V and George VI. In 1900, she won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris for her suite of furnishings designed for the British Royal Pavilion, an Elizabethan-style manor house created by the architect Edwin Lutyens. Whichelo also exhibited works at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, founded in 1887 to raise public awareness of the artistic merits of decorative art and handicraft and to give designers the same opportunity to display their works as the painters of easel pictures.
The achievements of many of these women are glossed over in modern secondary sources. The purpose in writing their biographies is to recognise the significant contribution they made alongside their male colleagues in elevating needlework to the high place it once held in the decorative arts.
Dr Lynn Hulse is a textile historian with a special interest in the development of art embroidery, circa 1860–1920. She is also co-founder of Ornamental Embroidery and a member of the Worshipful Company of Broderers. Her most recent book Reviving the Art of Embroidery: Lady Victoria Welby and the Founding of the Royal School of Needlework will be published later this year.
July 2024: summary of new articles
Beginning in 1831 Frances Lambert (1798–1880), born in London, taught various types of ornamental needlework with her sister Catharine at Hanover Square, where her renown as an embroiderer and author steadily grew. In 1837, she received a warrant as ‘embroiderer in general’ and ‘needlewoman in ordinary’ to Queen Victoria. Lambert was one of the first needlewomen to publish a series of handbooks on the subject, which went into several editions in Britain and North America.
As a member of the Ecclesiological Society Agnes Blencowe (1817–1896), born in Norfolk, exhibited specimens of historic needlework collected during her travels alongside examples of her own work based on medieval designs. Her skill in curation led to the 1848 publication of the book Ecclesiastical Embroidery. Blencowe later co-founded the Ladies’ Ecclesiastical Embroidery Society, which was the first of its kind and soon became the model for other charitable groups.
Born in London, Anastasia Marie Dolby (1823/4–1873) played a major role in elevating embroidery from a craft to a serious art form and was essential in the founding of the Royal School of Needlework, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2022. She was the author of two important handbooks on the subject, and her published writings draw extensively on her first-hand study of historic specimens.
Many churches were adorned with the ecclesiastical embroideries of Elizabeth Glaister (1839–1892), born in Sussex, who was another passionate advocate for the revival of decorative needlework. Like Anastasia Dolby, Glaister belonged to the vanguard of designers and practitioners who sought to alter the popular perception of embroidery. She co-authored Art Embroidery: A Treatise on the Revived Practice of Decorative Needlework, one of the earliest books to be published on the subject.
Louisa Anne Wade (1843–1920) was trained in the techniques of church embroidery from an early age, carrying out work at home to sell in support of local charities in London. During her forty-year tenure as its manager and principal, the Royal School of Needlework exhibited specimens at several world expositions, and Wade oversaw hundreds of major commissions—not least Queen Victoria’s funeral pall and the coronation requirements for Edward VII and George.
Mary Eleanor [Nellie] Whichelo (1862–1959), also of London, joined the painting room at the Royal School of Needlework in 1879 with her older sister Georgiana (Georgie) Whichelo (1856–1917). Within a decade Nellie had become head of design. Throughout her sixty-year career at the Royal School of Needlework, she was involved in several important commissions including the coronation requirements for Edward VII, George V, and George VI.
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Born in Bangkok, Thailand (then Siam), Amy Elizabeth Bell (1859–1920) became the only woman stockbroker in London and attracted publicity by publishing a regular monthly investment list that showed off the breadth of her financial knowledge and her understanding of foreign politics. As well as breaking new ground in her choice of profession, Bell was driven to equip women with good financial knowledge, writing widely on related topics for a wide popular audience.
Often described as the first woman stockbroker Beatrice Gordon Holmes (1884–1951), born in London, drew public attention by speaking about finance in newspapers, magazines, on the radio, and at conferences, highlighting prospects for women’s career progression and economic independence. In 1927 she became a director of the City Savings Bank of Budapest, the only woman bank director in Hungary, and in 1939 she helped to form the Association of Stock and Share Dealers.
The Institute of Actuaries voted to admit women on the same conditions as men at a special general meeting in November 1919, two years after the London-born Gladys Caroline Brooker [née Gregory] (1899–1982) had joined the Prudential Assurance company. She studied for the Institute’s examinations alongside Dorothy Davis (1897–1977), passing her first exam in 1920 and subsequent exams in each year afterwards, qualifying with Davis in 1923. Together they became the first women actuaries in Britain.
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The update contains new accounts of a father and son, both journalists. From his postings abroad, the popular journalist and diplomatist Eustace Clare Grenville-Murray (1823–1881), born in London, regularly sent articles to Charles Dickens’s Daily News in secret, but his dissembling was eventually exposed. Rather than dismiss him altogether, Lord Palmerston in 1852 arranged for Grenville-Murray’s post to be shifted from Vienna to Hanover. The embarrassment hardly kept him from writing, however, and from that point onward Grenville-Murray expanded his travel writing to include explicit criticism of British diplomacy.
Grenville-Murray’s son James Brinsley-Richards [formerly Reginald Temple Strange Clare Grenville-Murray] (1846–1892), also born in London, assisted his father in the attempt to gain revenge against the Foreign Office for the latter’s dismissal from government service in May 1868. Together they launched a satirical weekly, The Queen’s Messenger, of which his father was proprietor and managing editor. After his father’s death he changed his name to James Brinsley-Richards, under which he followed Grenville-Murray as a successful journalist and author.
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In addition, portrait likenesses are added to the articles on: the painter and sculptor Maria Bell, Lady Bell (1755-1825); the poor-law inspector, folk-song collector, and botanist Harriet Mason (1845-1932); the costume designer and writer, Alice Comyns Carr (1850-1927); the translator and author Dorothea Bussy (1865-1960); the hand-weaving revivalist Ethel Mairet (1872-1952); the photographer Olive Edis (1876-1955); the novelist and playwright Enid Bagnold (1889-1981); the engineer Verena Holmes (1889-1964); and the mathematician Ida Busbridge (1908-1988).
The Oxford DNB is updated regularly throughout the year, giving you access to the most up-to-date and accurate information available. Nearly all public libraries in England, Scotland, and Wales—and all in Northern Ireland—subscribe to the Oxford DNB. This means you can access tens of thousands of biographies, free, via your local library—anywhere, anytime. Full access to all biographies is also available by individual subscription.
Discover a full list of entries added this year.
