'The Riches and Treasures of Other Countries': Women, Empire and Maritime Expertise in Early Victorian London.

This article explores the career of Janet Taylor, one of the leading navigation experts of the early Victorian period. The many facets of Taylor’s business activities were enmeshed in the scientific and entrepreneurial pursuits underpinning British global expansion. Taylor, moreover, was an exceptional example of much wider female participation in these maritime activities. As such this constituency of women provides a neglected aspect of Victorian women’s relationship to empire, a phenomenon which has often focused instead upon female engagement in the associational projects of colonial reform. The article considers in particular the paratextual apparatus of Taylor’s publications (such as the title page, dedication, preface and appended advertisements) to consider the ways in which Taylor was able to present herself as a cultural authority in her field. Contrasting Taylor’s public persona with those presented by her male competitors reveals some stark gendered differences however – differences which confound many scholarly arguments concerning the construction of female authorial identities. Unlike her male competitors, who tended to delineate modest personas, stressing their pedagogical experience in the field, Janet Taylor positioned her activities more boldly in relation to their maritime and imperial significance. As such, the article considers the fluid nature of gendered performances in early-Victorian London. In so doing it follows Hall and Rose’s concept of the ‘unconscious acceptance’ of empire in this period, a quiescent sensibility which occasionally became more sharply articulated as a result of contingent – and in this case – highly gendered pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]