In the spring of 1859, not long after the success of her first novel, Adam Bede, George Eliot submitted a much shorter work to her publisher, John Blackwood, for his consideration. Blackwood's eventual letter in response to the piece arrived more…
'There is no such thing as natural barrenness in natural women' wrote the eminent French psychologist Eugene Becklard in the 1840s, and, in general, physicians agreed with him. Certainly in mid-nineteenth-century literature children were the sine qua…
