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Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett

British feminist and author

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ5362493 ↗
Source-derived summary

Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett (1846–1930), also known as Mrs George Corbett, was an English feminist writer, best known for her novel New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1889).

Life

Corbett was born on 16 August 1846 near Wigan at Standishgate. Her parents were Mary (born Marsden) and Benjamin Corbett. Her father worked at a forge and she had a good education.

Corbett worked as a journalist for the Newcastle Daily Chronicle and as a popular writer of adventure and society novels. Many of her novels originated as magazine serials and not published in book form.

In June 1889, Mrs Humphry Ward's open letter "An Appeal Against Female Suffrage" was published in The Nineteenth Century with over a hundred other female signatories against the extension of Parliamentary suffrage to women. Inflamed by this "most despicable piece of treachery ever perpetrated towards women by women", Corbett wrote and published New Amazonia.

While New Amazonia was the most explicitly feminist of her novels, it was not the only one to deal with the position of women in society. Her novel When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead (1894) features one of the earliest female detectives in fiction, Annie Cory, and is itself preceded by Adventures of a Lady Detective around 1890, possibly published in a periodical.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett” as british feminist and author. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Elizabeth, Burgoyne and Corbett.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1846, 1930, 1889, 1894—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1846-08-16. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Elizabeth, Burgoyne and Corbett providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett”, the useful work is to connect “british feminist and author” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5362493. VIAF identifies the subject as 63164056. The Library of Congress control number is n90630552. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1846, 1930, 1889 and 1894.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett primary sources, Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett archive and Elizabeth research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett”?
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  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.