Description
Book SynopsisIn 1907, Grace Oakeshott faked her own death by drowning. Aged 35, she left a marriage and a successful professional life in England and fled with her lover, Walter Reeve, to New Zealand. What prompted her to do so? Jocelyn Robson traces her life story through social, political and religious reform movements of the fin de siècle period.
Trade Review“This lucidly-written book ostensibly concerns, and resolves, the mystery of Grace Oakeshott’s faked suicide in 1907 when she appeared to have drowned off the coast of Brittany. … The author has written a readable and informative book which will appeal to those interested in local and social history as well as in, this often intriguing, biography.” (Brian Lancaster, CHNSS Bulletin, Vol. 157, September, 2016)
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Prologue
PART I
1. Radicals in Suburbia
2. Learning Curves
3. Finding Their Own Way
4. 'Another Word for Suicide'
5. 'Fellowship is Heaven'
PART II
6. Answering the Call
7. 'Not Much Home About It'
8. Behind Closed Doors
9. Girls in Trades
10. Medical Men
PART III
11. A Place to Begin Again
12. 'Ignoble Motives'
13. The Politics of Knitting
14. Landfall
15. After Lives
