{{Short description|Book by Annie Sophie Cory}} {{No footnotes|date=August 2024}}{{Infobox novel | author = [[Annie Sophie Cory]] (as Victoria Cross) | genre = [[New Woman]] novel | pub_date = 1901 }} '''''Anna Lombard''''' is a [[New Woman]] novel by British writer [[Annie Sophie Cory]], writing as Victoria Cross. First published in 1901, it is based on the idea that it takes a New Man as well to form a perfect union of the sexes.
==Literary significance and criticism==
In the [[Preface]] to her novel, Victoria Cross claims that she "endeavoured to draw in Gerald Ethridge a character whose actions should be in accordance with the principles laid down by [[Jesus|Christ]], one that would display, not in words but in his actual life, that [[gentleness]], [[humility]], [[patience (character trait)|patience]], [[charity (virtue)|charity]], and [[sacrifice|self-sacrifice]] that our [[Redeemer (Christianity)|Redeemer]] himself enjoined. [...] Fearlessly, and with the [[Gospel]] of Christ in my hand, I offer this example of his teaching to the great Christian public for its verdict, confident that I shall be justified by it."{{Cn|date=May 2026}}
''Anna Lombard'' ultimately sold more than six million copies and went through more than 40 editions. It received favourable ([[William Thomas Stead]], who praised the idea of [[gender]] [[role reversal]]) and less favourable reviews; the authors of the latter group, which included Christian critics, dismissed the novel as a piece of [[transgressional fiction]] violating law—advocating or at least justifying [[infanticide]]—, convention, and contemporary sensibility by constructing an image of British female sexuality that had rarely been conceived in any detail outside of [[pornography|pornographic]] texts, for example the notion that a sexually experienced woman is an asset to a marriage.{{Cn|date=May 2026}}
As such a [[sensation novel]], ''Anna Lombard'' is mentioned in [[Katherine Mansfield]]'s 1908 short story, "The Tiredness of Rosabel,"<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Tiredness of Rosabel {{!}} NZETC |url=https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-ManSome-t1-body-d1.html |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20240518102855/https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-ManSome-t1-body-d1.html |archive-date=2024-05-18 |access-date=2026-05-28 |website=nzetc.victoria.ac.nz}}</ref> where a young working-class woman reading a "cheap, paper-covered edition" on the bus is completely absorbed in the book.
==References== {{Reflist}}
== Further reading == * Melisa Brittain: [http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/MQ40398.pdf "Dangerous Crossings: Victorian Feminism, Imperialist Discourse, and Victoria Cross's 'New Woman' in Indigenous Space"], M.A. thesis ([[University of Guelph]], 1999), particularly Chapter 3: "The 'Fall' and 'Rise' of the Transgressive New Woman: Representing the Unrepresentable in ''Anna Lombard''". * William L. Alden: [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1901/06/01/101073734.pdf "London Literary Letter"], ''[[The New York Times]]'' (June 1, 1901) BR15. (Comparing the novel to [[Émile Zola|Zola's]] ''[[La Terre]]'', Alden calls ''Anna Lombard'' "a nauseating book [...] which no man should read immediately before dinner unless he wishes to lose his appetite.") * [[William Thomas Stead|W .T. Stead]]: "Anna Lombard: A Novel of the Ethics of Sex", ''[[Review of Reviews]]'' No. 23 (1901) 595–597.
==External links== {{portal|Novels}} * [https://archive.org/details/annalombard00crosiala ''Anna Lombard'' online] at the [[Internet Archive]] * [https://www.andrewwhitehead.net/blog/anna-lombard A recent blog about Anna Lombard] discussing plot, author and context.
{{New Woman (late 19th century)}}
[[Category:1901 British novels]] [[Category:Novels set in India]] [[Category:Novels set in Myanmar]]