The Authority of Anonymity: Sophia Jex-Blake’s Scotsman Leaders and the Politics of Self-Citation

Abstract:Sophia Jex-Blake led the campaign for female doctors that opened the medical profession to women in Britain. This essay announces and contextualizes the discovery of archival material that proves Jex-Blake secretly worked as a paid journalist for the daily newspaper the Scotsman during the campaign and that she later engaged in a practice of anonymous self-citation when she discussed the Scotsman articles in Medical Women: A Thesis and a History (1886). This previously unknown aspect of Jex-Blake’s prolific writing career contributes to our understanding of how Victorian women deployed conventions of anonymity within the periodical press to effect social change.