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Canadian scholar and writer Grant Allen held many progressive views, and he saw himself as a proponent of women's rights. He penned the novel The Woman Who Did as a means of shedding light on the many social strictures and constraints facing women in the late nineteenth century. The story follows a middle-class young woman who deliberately flouts convention and eventually bears a child out of wedlock. Met with a firestorm of criticism in its day, The Woman Who Did remains an intriguing read more than 100 years later.

In the character of Dolly Foster, British writer Anthony Hope has created an unforgettable embodiment of the turbulent end of the Victorian era. Constrained by old-fashioned conventions but bursting with newfangled ideas, this young woman is the element that ties together all of the vignettes and short tales collected in The Dolly Dialogues.