THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD ETC. VOL. I. [REPRINTED, _by permission, from the_ SATURDAY REVIEW] THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD AND OTHER Social Essays BY E. LYNN LINTON AUTHOR OF 'THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS' 'UNDER WHICH LORD?' 'THE REBEL OF THE FAMILY' 'IONE' ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. [Illustration] LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen 1883 [_All rights reserved_] LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET Dedicated TO ALL GOOD GIRLS AND TRUE WOMEN PREFACE. So many false reports followed the appearance of these essays, that I am grateful to the authorities of the _Saturday Review_ for their present permission to republish them under my own name, even though the best of the day has a little gone by, and other forms of folly have been flying about since these were shot at. The essays hit sharply enough at the time, and caused some ill-blood. 'The Girl of the Period' was especially obnoxious to many to whom women were the Sacred Sex above criticism and beyond rebuke; and I had to pay pretty smartly in private life, by those who knew, for what they termed a libel and an untruth. With these passionate repudiators on the one hand, on the other were some who, trading on the enforced anonymity of the paper, took spurious credit to themselves for the authorship. I was twice introduced to the 'Writer of the "Girl of the Period."' The first time he was a clergyman who had boldly told my friends that he had written the paper; the second, she was a lady of rank well known in London society, and to this hour believed by her own circle to have written this and other of the articles included in the present collection. I confess that, whether for praise or blame, I am glad to be able at last to assume the full responsibility of my own work. In re-reading these papers I am more than ever convinced that I have struck the right chord of condemnation, and advocated the best virtues and most valuable characteristics of women. I neither soften nor retract a line of what I have said. One of the modern phases of womanhood--hard, unloving, mercenary, ambitious, without domestic faculty and devoid of healthy natural instincts--is still to me a pitiable mistake and a grave national disaster. And I think now, as I thought when I wrote these papers, that a public and professional life for women is incompatible with the discharge of their highest duties or the cultivation of their noblest qualities. I think now, as I thought then, that the sphere of human action is determined by the fact of sex, and that there does exist both natural limitation and natural direction. This creed, which summarizes all that I have said _in extenso_, I repeat with emphasis, and maintain with the conviction of long years of experience. E. LYNN LINTON. 1883.