Secure The Match Girl And The Heiress Engineered By Seth Koven Presented As File

to pick up this book:

, detailed history of Victorian England, especially in relation to Poor Laws and charitable endeavors
, the contradiction of the poor girl Nellie and the rich girl Muriel
, a reality compared with the Victorian England fiction lovers know from Dickens amp co,

Reasons this book was not for me:

, little is known about Nellie, save for what Muriel later wrote so the parts about Nellie turn into long treatises on generalities
, the author seems to have trouble filling the gaps in the specifics as related to Nellie and Muriel, taking a wandering path from Point A to Point B
.
it is extremely heavy on the Christianity of the time, and yet seems to pay little attention to it at the same time, possibly because it has to balance Catholicism and Protestantism in it's critique

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest amp original review.
ed in The Christian Science Monitor From the Christian Science Monitor,:

"Koven's book so ambitious, both in terms of its scope, . . and it's execution but it doesn't read like a selfserious doorstop of academic at the heart of of this excellent work is a engrossing, sensitive,and thoughtful story of history, theology,politics, and genuine love.
" It's pretty serious nonfiction but shows two perspectives on the lateth earlyth century socialistnonconformistlaborpacifistsuffrage movements, Two close women friends, one poor, one upper middle class who worked together in the East End slums of London to improve conditions and bring about "heaven on earth".
Through the story of the relationship between poor match factory worker Nellie Dowell and middleclass Muriel Lester, Koven explores the colliding worlds of rich and poor in East London and the growth of Christian philanthropy in thes and earlys.
Against a backdrop of the beginnings of the labour movement and trades unionism, Christian socialism and pacifism, this is a fascinating account of the lives and times of a particular group of “dogooders” who in all sincerity and with great conviction worked for better social conditions.
Meticulously researched and based on many original documents, this is a scholarly and academic book, but accessible to the general reader and always readable, I certainly learnt a lot and was intrigued to find out about such indomitable characters as Nellie Dowell, who has now deservedly found a voice, Muriel Lester and Nellie Dowell are the subjects of this biography, Their tales are told against a wellpresented, thoroughly researched backdrop of thes and earlys in London and further afield,

Muriel was welloff, the daughter of a shipbuilder, Nellie was the daughter of a sailor who drowned at sea, so that she and her siblings were taken from their mother into a poorhouse until she could get employment with the match firm where her mother worked.
Women were not able to earn as much as men and could not support a family,

In her early twenties

Nellie was sent by R Bell amp Co, the firm, which faced strikes over low pay, bad working conditions and dangerous use of phosphorous, to make matches in New Zealand.
The authorities here had read of the London working conditions and were determined not to allow such deplorable situations to arise, so Nellie was much better off, The firm saved by not exporting matches long distance, yet the materials to make them had to be imported from various countries,

Muriel like many New Women of the time was educated, welloff, in no hurry to marry and raised with Christian values, She and others went out to investigate social conditions, working women, factories and disease, They spoke with journalists and encouraged unions, Muriel met Nellie when the worker returned to London via Scandinavia, She wrote Nellie's biography, leaning on the fact of her childhood having been stolen from her, The two women remained close friends and Muriel travelled widely and became famous, a friend of Ghandi and ardent campaigner for human rights and women's rights,

This book is a great reflection of the wider times and while not a light read will draw in anyone who wants to know more about the changes in our modern world.
Very good indeed. Intriguing insight into early twentieth century social history in London East End
Nellie Dowell was a matchfactory girl in Victorian London who spent her early years consigned to orphanages and hospitals.
Muriel Lester, the daughter of a wealthy shipbuilder, longed to be free of the burden of money and possessions, Together, these unlikely soul mates sought to remake the world according to their own utopian vision of Christ's teachings, "The Match Girl and the Heiress" paints an unforgettable portrait of their latenineteenthcentury girlhoods of wealth and want, and their daring twentiethcentury experiments in ethical living in a world torn apart by war, imperialism, and industrial capitalism.

In this captivating book, Seth Koven chronicles how each traveled the globeNellie as a spinster proletarian laborer, Muriel as a wellheeled tourist and revered Christian peacemaker, anticolonial activist, and humanitarian.
Koven vividly describes how their lives crossed in the slums of East London, where they inaugurated a grassroots revolution that took the Sermon on the Mount as a guide to achieving economic and social justice for the dispossessed.
Koven shows how they devoted themselves to Kingsley HallGandhi's London home inand Britain's first "people's house" founded on the Christian principles of social sharing, pacifism, and reconciliationand sheds light on the intimacies and inequalities of their loving yet complicated relationship.


"The Match Girl and the Heiress" probes the inner lives of these two extraordinary women against the panoramic backdrop of shopfloor labor politics, global capitalism, counterculture spirituality, and pacifist feminism to expose the wounds of poverty and neglect that Christian love could never heal.

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