From a Woman's Note-Book: Studies in Modern Girlhood and Other Sketches
Navy cloth 8vo, 237, 8pp. Gilt stamped titles; top edge gilt. Small puncture to spine and mild foxing throughout textbook, about Very Good overall. An uncommon series of essays written from 1891-1903 and told in the manner of personal anecdotes but not, according to the preface, autobiographical. Published the year she died (and a year after her best-known publication, Highways and Byways in London) the essays have a pervasive disapproving bias, especially in the essays concerning girl's education. OCLC shows 3 copies in the United States.
In "A Modern High-School Girl", a young woman who is academically accomplished, though first in her class, is disinterested during a grand tour; in "Shadows" a girl who wants to be a genius stresses herself to the point of sickness, ends up marrying and becoming a mother instead (then all is well). Another essay juxtaposes the learning styles of Tilly from Uncle Tom's Cabin and Jane Eyre.
In "The Modern Novel," she also bemoans realist fiction and the "profound influence" of "the curious distinctions drawn by library authorities as to what their public shall or shall not read." She doesn't take issue with censorship, but the taste of the librarians: "they are neither vigilant nor entirely consistent—for they banish from their shelves many books which will live in spite of them, and welcome all that flood of unpleasant modern fiction which will assuredly pass away, leaving only an ill odour be hind it." (130-131).