The Woman Who Did was the most notorious of the so-called 'New Woman' novels of the 1890s, fiction inspired by contemporary debates about women's education, family life, and sexual independence. Herminia Barton, Cambridge-educated daughter of the Dean of Dunwich, is more determined than most to arrange her own life. She accordingly enters into a relationship outside marriage with one of her own 'free and advanced' kind, the lawyer Alan Merrick. The consequences of that decision test her resolve to the very limit. Grant Allen's account of a life which flies in the face of convention has remained a topic of fierce controversy ever since. This book is intended for general; students following courses in feminist fiction, women's studies.