Yellow Book Sisters in The Dream Garden: A New Woman Network

Abstract

In her autobiography The Sheltering Tree (1939), critically-neglected New Woman writer Netta Syrett (1865-1943) records her pride as editor of children’s annual The Dream Garden (1905): ‘I think I had a right to be proud of my Dream Garden, which by now should be a rarity worth the attention of book collectors, if only for the names of some of the contributors!’[i] In a further comment that is both self-effacing and self-congratulating, she writes, ‘I marvel at my boldness in asking such distinguished people to contribute to a more or less private venture […] only a limited number were published’.[ii] The wealth of notable writers and artists boasted by the contents page offers insight into Netta’s creative network and her esteemed place within it. While this list features well-known male writers including Laurence Housman and Arthur Ransome, the contributors are overwhelmingly female. They include artist, author and playwright Constance Smedley (1876-1941), who founded the International Lyceum Club for Women Artists and Writers in 1904 (of which Netta was chairwoman in 1906); Marion Wallace Dunlop (1864-1942), hailed as the first hunger-striking suffragette (in 1909); Slade-trained artist Alice Woodward (1862-1951), a founding member of the Women’s Guild of Arts (1907); and feminist artist, writer, and editor Pamela Colman Smith (1878-1951). The Dream Garden, like Netta’s autobiography, evidences her ‘genius for friendship’: that is, her ability to form mutually-beneficial career-enabling companionships and creative partnerships, where ‘socialising becomes part of [her] artistry’.^[iii]

[i] Netta Syrett, The Sheltering Tree (Geoffrey Bles, 1939), p. 152; The Dream Garden: A Children’s Annual, ed. by Netta Syrett (John Baillie, 1905). Henceforth Netta Syrett is referred to as ‘Netta’ and her sister Nellie Syrett will be referred to as ‘Nellie’, to avoid confusion due to their shared surname.

[ii] Syrett, Sheltering Tree, pp. 149–50.

[iii] Richard Le Gallienne, The Romantic ’90s (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925), pp.191–92; Joseph Thorne, ‘Decadent Sociability and Material Culture at the Fin de Siècle’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, PhD thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2019) <http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/11254/1/2019thornephd.pdf2019> [accessed 27 September 2023], p. 1.