Radical Reformers and Respectable Rebels: How the Two Lives of Grace Oakeshott Defined an Era [Paperback]

In 1907, Grace Oakeshott faked her own death by drowning. Aged 35, she left a marriage and a successful professional life in England and fled with her lover, Walter Reeve, to New Zealand. What prompted her to do so? Jocelyn Robson traces her life story through social, political and religious reform movements of the fin de si?cle period.Introduction
Prologue
PART I
1. Radicals in Suburbia
2. Learning Curves
3. Finding Their Own Way
4. 'Another Word for Suicide'
5. 'Fellowship is Heaven'
PART II
6. Answering the Call
7. 'Not Much Home About It'
8. Behind Closed Doors
9. Girls in Trades
10. Medical Men
PART III
11. A Place to Begin Again
12. 'Ignoble Motives'
13. The Politics of Knitting
14. Landfall
15. After Lives
This lucidly-written book ostensibly concerns, and resolves, the mystery of Grace Oakeshotts faked suicide in 1907 when she appeared to have drowned off the coast of Brittany. & The author has written a readable and informative book which will appeal to those interested in local and social history as well as in, this often intriguing, biography. (Brian Lancaster, CHNSS Bulletin, Vol. 157, September, 2016)

Jocelyn Robson has worked as a researcher and teacher in further and higher education and has special interests in women's history and vocational training. Raised in New Zealand and living in London, she is now a fulltime writer.The fin de si?cle was a time of social and cultural upheaval, with many women living more adventurous and defiant lives than their mothers would ever have dreamed possible. This is the true story of an Englishwoman who staged her own death and re-invented herself in the far colony of New Zealand, in the early 1900s. Grace Oakeshott's life is revealed through the reform movements of the period, including education for girls, ethical sol£R