Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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Writer or writing
Author profile
Helen Dunmore
HD
first established herself as a poet, but became internationally known as a novelist when she won the Orange Prize in 1996. A prolific writer, she also had considerable success with books for children.
April 1759: London publishers launched an expensive campaign...
Writer or writing item
April 1759
London publishers launched an expensive campaign to curb pirated reprints from Dublin, Edinburgh, and English provincial centres.
Nichol, Donald W. “Warburton (Not!) on copyright: Clearing up the Misattribution of An Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Literary Property”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
19
, No. 2, 1996, pp. 171-82.
173
Writer or writing
Author profile
Olaudah Equiano
OE
wrote, and published in 1789, the earliest known autobiography by a Black person. This book pioneered the genre of the slave narrative, and increased Equiano's opportunities for publishing other writing (public letters, petitions, and...
26 January 1942: Eamon De Valera protested against the stationing...
National or international item
26 January 1942
Eamon De Valera
protested against the stationing of American troops in Northern Ireland on the grounds that Britain and the US might invade Eire to secure military bases.
Messenger, Charles. World War Two Chronological Atlas: When, Where, How and Why. Bloomsbury, 1989.
77
Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
372-3
1856: O'Donovan Rossa established the nationalist...
Foster, Robert Fitzroy. Modern Ireland 1600-1972. Allen Lane, 1988.
607
Writer or writing
Author profile
Elizabeth Goudge
EG
, a popular writer of the mid-twentieth century, published about forty titles: fifteen novels (many of them historical) and some stories for children, as well as early plays, religious non-fiction, anthologies. and an autobiography.
1590: Christopher Hooke published a sermon in which...
Building and people item
1590
Christopher Hooke
published a sermon in which he admonished women in pregnancy that only God's mercy could enable them to produce children that were not monsters.
Clark, Emma. “Metaphors of Motherhood: claiming back the female body in the poems of Mary Sidney and Mary Wroth”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
8
, No. 2, 2001, pp. 263-73.
264
Writer or writing
Author profile
Hester Biddle
HB
is one of the most powerful as well as one of the more prolific seventeenth-century Quaker
writers of polemical prophecies or tracts. She depicts in hypnotic, biblical language the imminent end of the world...
December 1958: Plans were laid for a Royal Shakespeare Company,...
1758: The Tory writer John Shebbeare was sentenced...
National or international item
1758
The Tory writer John Shebbeare
was sentenced to stand in the pillory for writing Letters to the People of England, a scathing attack on the Newcastle
government.
Hudson, Nicholas. “Discourse of Transition: Johnson, the 1750s, and the Rise of the Middle Class”. The Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, Vol.
13
, 2002, pp. 31-51.
33
November 1929: The Tomlin Commission was established to...
Building and people item
November 1929
The Tomlin Commission was established to consider issues of pay and employment opportunities in the BritishCivil Service
.
Evans, Dorothy. Women and the Civil Service. Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1934.
51-7
Martindale, Hilda. Women Servants of the State, 1870-1938: A History of Women in the Civil Service. G. Allen and Unwin , 1938.
100
26 May 1966: British Guiana attained independence within...
National or international item
26 May 1966
British Guiana attained independence within the Commonwealth as the state of Guyana.
Palmer, Alan, and Veronica Palmer. The Chronology of British History. Century, 1992.
McGann, Susan. The Battle of the Nurses: A Study of Eight Women who Influenced the Development of Professional Nursing, 1880-1930. Scutari, 1992.
4, 65
1851: The Royal College of Surgeons set up the...
Building and people item
1851
The Royal College of Surgeons
set up the first male midwifery course in London and excluded female midwives.
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press, 1988.
501
December 1789: More than fifty prostitutes were arrested...
Building and people item
December 1789
More than fifty prostitutes were arrested during a single Saturday night sweep of the Strand.
Henderson, Tony. Disorderly Women. Longman, 1999.
126-7
2 November 1903: The London Daily Mirror began publication...
Building and people item
2 November 1903
The LondonDaily Mirror began publication with a woman editor, Mary Howarth
, as a penny paper for gentlewomen by gentlewomen.
Trager, James. The Women’s Chronology: A Year-by-Year Record, from Prehistory to the Present. Henry Holt, 1994.
367
Bozman, Ernest Franklin, editor. Everyman’s Encyclopaedia. 4th Edition, J. M. Dent, 1958, 12 vols.
Stott, Mary. “Women in Newspapers”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 126-32.
126-7
1734: John Williams's Method to Learn to Design...
Building and people item
1734
John Williams
's Method to Learn to Design the Passions, translated from a manual by French painter Charles Le Brun
, appeared; it proved highly influential.
McMaster, Juliet. “Reading Body Language: A Game of Skill”. Persuasions, Vol.
23
, 2001, pp. 90-104.
95-6, 104
June 1893: The Experience of a Woman Journalist by Charlotte...
Women writers item
June 1893
The Experience of a Woman Journalist by Charlotte O'Conor Eccles
, an article relating her struggles as a woman working in journalism, appeared anonymously in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
O’Conor Eccles, Charlotte. “The Experience of a Woman Journalist”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
153
, June 1893, pp. 830-8.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Writer or writing
Author profile
Isak Dinesen
ID
, cosmopolitan fiction-writer of the mid twentieth century writing in Danish and English, produced short stories in periodicals and collections, a couple of novels, and two highly unusual books about Africa in which the...
1949: The research programme Mass-Observation published...
Building and people item
1949
The research programme Mass-Observation
published Meet Yourself at the Doctor's, a collection of comments on the fairly recently founded National Health Service
.
British Book News. British Council.
(March 1950): 173
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
April 1684: Mr and Mrs Priest's school at Gorges House,...
Building and people item
April 1684
Mr
and Mrs Priest's school at Gorges House, Chelsea, put on a private revival of the court masque Venus and Adonis, by John Blow
(to a libretto perhaps by the future Anne Finch
).
Campbell, Margaret. Henry Purcell, Glory of His Age. Oxford University Press, 1995.
136
Winn, James Anderson. “A Versifying Maid of Honour: Anne Finch and the Libretto for Venus and AdonisReview of English Studies, Vol.
59
, No. 238, Feb. 2008, pp. 67-85.
67-85
Before September 1741: Corsica had begun its struggle for independence...
National or international item
Before September 1741
Corsica had begun its struggle for independence from Genoa, in which a woman, Bianca Colonna
, was one of the heroes.
Walpole, Horace. The Letters of Horace Walpole. Editor Toynbee, Mrs Paget, Clarendon, 1903–1925, 16 vols.
1: 103
July 1848: Austrian troops restored the Grand Duke to...
National or international item
July 1848
Austrian troops restored the Grand Duke to his throne in Tuscany, having successfully suppressed the republic there.
Cowie, Leonard W., and Leonard Woolfson. Years of Nationalism: European History 1815-1890. Edward Arnold, 1985.
189
April 1981: Two nights of race riots in Brixton, London,...
Building and people item
April 1981
Two nights of race riots in Brixton, London, did massive damage and left 300 people injured.
“Race riots”. The Independent on Sunday, 1 July 2001, p. 9.
