Francisca Wood and Nineteenth-Century Periodical Culture: Pressing for Change by Cláudia Pazos Alonso

Abstract

Reviewed by: Francisca Wood and Nineteenth-Century Periodical Culture: Pressing for Change by Cláudia Pazos Alonso Leticia Villamediana González Francisca Wood and Nineteenth-Century Periodical Culture: Pressing for Change. By Cláudia Pazos Alonso. Cambridge: Legenda. 2020. xi+250 pp. £75. ISBN 978–1–781887–99–8. Cláudia Pazos Alonso's monograph explores the fascinating life and career of a neglected but ground-breaking Portuguese writer, journalist, and translator. As a cultural agent, an unorthodox and freethinking intellectual, an activist, and a mentor, Wood's multifaceted profile, work, and influence have at last found belated recognition and celebration in this full-length account that also provides an overview of the intellectual landscape of the period. Wood (1802–1900), the reader is convincingly shown, was an early and important precursor of first-wave feminism. Carefully documented, the monograph is composed of an Introduction, six chapters, a Conclusion, and a Bibliography, followed by three extremely valuable appendices that list over ninety works published by Tipografia Luso-Britânica, Wood's own press ('Tipografia Luso-Britânica'; 'List of Editorials by Francisca Wood'; 'List of Editorials'). Chapter 1 beautifully reconstructs the life and family background of both Francisca and her British husband, William Thorold Wood. Although information on Francisca is scant, Pazos Alonso succeeds in piecing together key moments from her biographical timeline, through the detailed exploration of articles and references in periodicals, as well as of different Portuguese archives and sites, such as the British cemetery in Lisbon, where the couple were buried. There is a significant focus on Wood's years in Britain given that, as Pazos Alonso argues, the Victorian era and the British political landscape between 1820 and 1850 impacted her later work and journalistic career. This is particularly evident on her return to Portugal in the 1860s, where the couple showed an educational and political commitment, contributing to female learning. It is precisely this presence of women in print culture that Chapter 2 scrutinizes, paying attention to the contributions of three other female intellectuals who have remained in the margins of Portuguese literary history. In so doing, Pazos Alonso not only demonstrates women's active contribution to periodical culture, but also shows how Wood's modern ideas and [End Page 508] journalistic work, especially her weekly A Voz Feminina (1868–69; known as O Progresso in latter years) stood up among her peers and became 'an unquestionable milestone in the Portuguese context' (p. 77). As such, the following chapters are dedicated to the detailed analysis of the periodical. Chapter 3 focuses on the progressive editorial team, mainly comprised of female contributors led by Francisca herself, who signed half of the editorials as well as other types of wittily crafted and transgressive articles, such as open letters addressed to distinguished men in power. All these political pieces, as Chapters 4 and 5 reveal, opened up debate on social issues such as the protection of animals and tackled gender discrimination and inequality, offering a searing critique of both Church and male hegemony, in an attempt to emancipate both men and women as a means to regenerate society and the country. Finally, Chapter 6 examines the cosmopolitan dimension of A Voz Feminina: that is, how the weekly contributed to the dissemination of foreign news on women's rights, becoming a cultural mediator and a key agent in a transnational network of periodicals that echoed the Woman Question across Europe and the Atlantic. By bringing Wood's ideas back to an English-reading audience, Pazos Alonso's compelling and engaging study not only rescues a prime Portuguese journalist and intellectual from cultural oblivion, but also grants her a well-deserved transnational place in feminist and gender scholarship. Leticia Villamediana González University of Warwick Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association