«This is a rich, suggestive, and long overdue study of a life cut tragically short, and an insightful study of the intellectual intersections of multiple disciplines in the 1880s. Stainthorp achieves a powerful recalibration of Naden's life and career, and promises to inspire a slew of further studies on this fascinating figure. Equally, it yields an important case study on the issue of interdisciplinarity at a critical period in its history, and a specific and particularly ambitious approach to the longheld problem of achieving 'unity in diversity'.»
(Adelene Buckland, Women: A Cultural Review, 31:3)
«It offers a deft mixture of archival research, historicism, and close reading, introduces readers to previously unknown writing by Naden, carefully reconstructs the details of late-Victorian science education, and provides a useful overview of late-Victorian philosophical debates.»
(Monique R. Morgan, Victorian Studies 64:3)
«This book represents a much-needed, full-length study of the brilliant intellectual trail Constance Naden blazed as a student and scholar: of the many facets of her brilliant career, and of her expansive synthetic mode of thinking. Naden's career interlaced so many issues and disciplines in such a fascinating way that, in this timely work, she acts as a case study for thinking about the value and practice of interdisciplinarity itself. This is an astute, lucid and illuminating analysis.»
(Marion Thain, Professor of Literature and Culture, King's College London)
«Stainthorp's study of Constance Naden both reveals and revels in the interdependence of disciplines that was her subject's tragically short-lived contribution to nineteenth-century thought. In doing so she thoughtfully synthesizes the variant parts of Naden's intellectual life. The result is a book of insightful combinations and cross-readings which illuminate the unity in diversity that was Naden's driving force.»
(Martin
