Biography

6 Feb 1833

Julia Wedgwood is born in London into the Wedgwood-Darwin family.

Her uncle is Charles Darwin.

Her mother is Fanny Wedgwood, salon hostess and feminist.

Her father is Hensleigh Wedgwood, philologist.

Her great-grandfather was the potter Josiah Wedgwood.

1840s-50s

Wedgwood is educated mainly at home, with a period at boarding school in Liverpool.

She takes university-level classes at Queen's and Bedford Colleges, London. Her subjects include political economy, Latin, and logic.

She is fluent in French, German, Italian, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

(Her uncle will use her help to translate the botanist Linnaeus!)

1858

Wedgwood starts off her publishing career with two novels, both appearing in 1858: Framleigh Hall and An Old Debt.

She is mentored by the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.

However, her father Hensleigh is uncomfortable with the emotions revealed in her novels. Apparently they give him a pain in the stomach.

1860

Julia transitions to publishing non-fiction.

She begins with a two-part dialogue on religion and science in Macmillan's Magazine.

She then explores various subjects over the next 50 years, including language, social reform, women's suffrage, evolution, and the ancient Greeks, among many others.

1863

Julia encounters the widowed poet Robert Browning, whose late wife was the legendary fellow-poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Julia and Robert develop a deep friendship.

In 1865, she ends it. Does she feel unable to stay an independent female intellectual while being in love? Is she uneasy with male sexuality, or sceptical about second marriages? Is she afraid she can never take the place of Elizabeth? It remains a mystery.

They reconnect and share a flurry of letters between 1868 and 1870, but ultimately, their friendship comes to a definitive close.

1888

For nearly two decades, Julia has dedicated herself to her masterpiece, The Moral Ideal, which is first published in 1888.

(A revised second edition will be released in 1909.)

It receives numerous glowing reviews, and Julia finds she is famous.

1894-

Wedgwood's next book The Message of Israel isn't so well received.

She goes on publishing anyway, into the early twentieth century.

She grows very concerned about animal welfare and is interested in spiritualism - attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead.

She dies in 1913 on the eve of the First World War.

She leaves much of her considerable estate to the National Anti-Vivisection Society founded by her friend, the philosopher Frances Power Cobbe.