The Match Girl and the Heiress

"Koven's beautifully written and exquisitely researched book illuminates, with brilliance and great perception, issues of class, capitalism, empire, gender, and love in early twentieth century Britain."--Jane Shaw, Stanford University"A brilliantly told tale of the unlikely love of two women divided by class but empowered by the ideals and practice of radical Christianity. This 'intimate history' transforms conventional narratives about charity, class, gender, and labor in the early twentieth century."--Lynn Hollen Lees, University of Pennsylvania"Seth Koven's luminous account of the unlikely chemistry between Muriel Lester (self-abasing slumming lady) and Nellie Dowell (self-improving match factory girl) sheds new light on their shared milieu of Edwardian Christian radicalism: a counterculture of religious modernism founded on a theology of love, with revolutionary opportunities for pacifism, feminism, and anti-imperialism. A rare and brilliant history of the ethical subject."--Leela Gandhi, Brown University"This powerful, moving, and innovative book tells the story of the relationship between two women--one a 'grande dame of global pacifism and social justice' and the other a 'Cockney cosmopolitan' who worked as a match girl in the United Kingdom and abroad. Koven brilliantly achieves exactly what he sets out to do: dissolve the boundaries between 'lives' and 'histories.'"--Deborah Epstein Nord, Princeton University"This is a beautifully written and researched book, one that will stand as one of the best books in modern British history for years to come. The Match Girl and the Heiress is destined to become an instant classic. There is no other book like it."--Sharon Marcus, author of Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England"How ought one to live in a society defined by inequality? Through his subjects, Nellie Dowell and Muriel Lester, Koven tells a detective story of the heart with deep resonance for today's debates about poverty and wealth, class and empire, Christianity and capitalism, gender formation and same-sex desire, the welfare state and voluntarism. The Match Girl and the Heiress is a methodologically and conceptually inspiring work, with a fine sense of empathy, balanced by shrewdly calibrated assessments of motives and consequences."--Deborah Cohen, author of Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain