ABSTRACT
Just as the ethic of work and endeavour epitomised by Samuel Smiles’s philosophy acted upon earlier educational imperatives stemming from evangelical Christianity and utilitarianism to produce the boy’s adventure story, the moral Fiction of the Empire, so new currents of thought in the mid-century also acted upon writing intended for girls. Here, too, the developments in fiction aimed at the moulding of aspirations and expectations to fit readers for a social role which was being newly defined. The wave of self-consciousness amongst the middle classes which the social, political, religious and economic changes of the century combined to generate had as one of its forms in the 1850s and 1860s a surge of questioning and redefining of female roles.1
