ABSTRACT
'Most people of parts have, at some time or other of their lives, an irresistible desire to publish their reminiscences,' declared Ella Hepworth Dixon in one of her weekly newspaper columns. The fact that Ella Hepworth Dixon never married or had children does not automatically signify that she became a stereo-typical Odd Woman'. The autobiography ultimately defies the notion, hinted at in her own novel, The Story of a Modern Woman, that the lot of a single woman is 'a dreary battle'. Unlike some women writers, particularly those of an older generation, such as Charlotte Yonge, Mary Ward and Eliza Lynn Linton, Ella Hepworth Dixon makes a working woman's life attractive, as indeed it seems to have been for her. She is thus writing against several stereotypes including the embittered old maid, the middle-class lady writing for leisure, and the over-zealous New Woman journalist in pince-nez and mackintosh.
