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Anna Lombard is aNew Woman novel byAnnie 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.
In thePreface 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 byChrist, one that would display, not in words but in his actual life, thatgentleness,humility,patience,charity, andself-sacrifice that ourRedeemer himself enjoined. [...] Fearlessly, and with theGospel 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."
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 ofgenderrole reversal) and less favourable reviews; the authors of the latter group, which included Christian critics, dismissed the novel as a piece oftransgressional fiction violating law—advocating or at least justifyinginfanticide—, convention, and contemporary sensibility by constructing an image of British female sexuality that had rarely been conceived in any detail outside ofpornographic texts, for example the notion that a sexually experienced woman is an asset to a marriage.
As such asensation novel,Anna Lombard is mentioned inKatherine Mansfield's 1908 short story, "The Tiredness of Rosabel,"[1] where a young working-class woman reading a "cheap, paper-covered edition" on the bus is completely absorbed in the book.
