Edith J. Simcox (1844-1901) was a respected public figure who kept a private journal from 1876 to 1900 in which she recorded her activities as scholar, reformer, and businesswoman, as well as secrets of her unrequited love for George Eliot and her observations on gender issues. Edith J. Simcox was born on August 21, 1844, and began to keep a personal journal, which she called Autobiography of a Shirtmaker, (1) in May of 1876. From 1876 until a few months before her death in 1901, Simcox recorded the day-to-day activities involved in her public life as a prolific writer, businesswoman, member of the London School Board, and social reformer. Her candor and wit make her Autobiography a unique repository of observations on gender issues from the perspective of a woman who is involved in many roles usually reserved for men. Simcox also uses her journal as a private diary in which she confides personal matters, including her secret love for the novelist George Eliot (1819-1880) and her pain that the love is not returned. From 1961, with Keith A. McKenzie's publication of his booklength study Edith Simcox and George Eliot, (2) based on his reading of the manuscript of the Autobiography of a Shirtmaker, until the 1998 publication of the entire journal, Simcox has been known almost exclusively in connection with Eliot. However, during Edith Simcox's life, she chose never to discuss her unrequited love with any other person but saved her confessions for the pages of her autobiography, which she writes is "not the autobiography of a shirtmaker but of a love" (32). Simcox's journal entries continued for nineteen years after Eliot's death on December 22, 1880. Throughout the entire Autobiography of a Shirtmaker, Simcox makes it perfectly clear in numerous entries that she determined that all she accomplished should serve as a tribute to Eliot and as a monument to her memory. Until her own death on September 15, 1901, Simcox worked diligently "to build for her a monument in the bettering of words and deeds to come" (137). Both Simcox's reform efforts and her writings provide an impressive legacy. This article will first focus on the self-revelatory private details recorded in the Autobiography of a Shirtmaker concerning Edith Simcox's love for Eliot, her attitudes toward marriage, her friendships with women other than Eliot, and her sense of her own androgyny. It will also discuss the gender issues related to Simcox's diligent efforts to better the lives of working class men, women, and children.
