Reconsidering Jessie Pope: The Writer Before "A Certain Poetess"

Abstract

In four chapters, I present a case study of Jessie Pope’s early career, focusing on her use of women in her writing for adults. Her women are smart, and their situations are orchestrated by Pope in ways that lay bare negotiations of space, silence, voice, and autonomy for the Edwardian woman. I move from examining broadly her women as they were published in Punch and collected in her first two anthologies, Paper Pellets and Airy Nothings, to a look at how she engages in the conversation surrounding women’s suffrage and the Women’s Social and Political Union and finally an examination of how Pope critiques the language surrounding the rise of the automobile. All draw attention to the situation of women.