Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane West
-
Standard Name: West, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Iliffe
Married Name: Jane West
Pseudonym: Prudentia Homespun
Pseudonym: The Author of The Advantages of Education
JW
, novelist, poet, and dramatist, became especially well-known during the 1790s for her novels' conservative message, in terms of both political and gender ideologies. Her less-known later work is arguably more complex and interesting.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge, 1989.
under West
Balfour, Clara. A Sketch of Mrs. Trimmer. W. and F. G. Cash, 1854.
Intertextuality and Influence
Eliza Haywood
A more recent generation of feminist scholars has succeeded in locating EH
in the developing tradition of women's fiction. Critic Mary Anne Schofield
has argued that her heroines are feisty feminists. Paula Backscheider
points out...
Literary responses
Sarah Trimmer
ST
's work made a great impact. She was one of the twenty-four most-reviewed women writers of 1789-90.
Hawkins, Ann R., and Stephanie Eckroth, editors. Romantic Women Writers Reviewed. Vol. 3 vols., Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011–2013.
It talked of the need to counter her poisonous false philosophy with antidotes from the writings of a More
, a Hamilton
, and a West
.
Michael-Johnston, Georgina. Helen Maria Williams: Liberty, Sensibility, and Education. University of Alberta, 1998.
140
Reception
Anna Seward
The writer Jane West
, replying to heavy condemnation of AS
from Thomas Percy
, offered a model of candid judgement. She agreed that Seward's prose style was not English but insisted that her poetry...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Meeke
But the most interesting feature of Midnight Weddings is the discussion of novels and novel-writing with which it opens. Meeke defends the function of novels (which, of course, must offer a good moral) and the...
Textual Features
Sarah Trimmer
In addition to Catharine Cappe
's work on Sunday schools and versions of fairy stories by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy
, the magazine reviewed work by a whole library of didactic, pedagogical, or improving writers, reprinted as...
Textual Features
Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility uses, reflects in its title, and radically alters, the paired-heroines motif made popular by Jane West
and others. If JA
's Dashwood sisters exemplify a pattern and a warning respectively, they nevertheless...
Textual Features
Mary Hays
The plot follows the life-stories of two sisters (somewhat crudely distinguished for worldly selfishness on the one hand and prudent, generous sincerity on the other) and their brother, who is a spendthrift like his frivolous...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Hervey
This was written quickly, but the American episodes reflect research.
Hervey, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. The History of Ned Evans (1796), edited by Helena Kelly, Pickering and Chatto, 2010, p. vii - xxii.
ix
The Irish edition has an extended, descriptive title (absent from at least the second London edition), which promises moral and critical remarks, Anecdotes of...
Textual Production
Anna Seward
With this work appeared AS
's Ode to the Sun. Richard Lovell Edgeworth
later categorically alleged that the best passages in the elegy were in fact written by Erasmus Darwin
, and this story...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Maria Mackenzie
The 1809 title-page quotes Shakespeare
's The Merchant of Venice. In 1811 this place is taken by lines from Henry VI Part III, in which the future Richard III avows his villainy and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Helena Wells
HW
's prefaces give some personal details and some opinions. She admires Jane West
, and hopes the cause of women will succeed to that of Abolition (now safely achieved). She argues that there ought...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Eva Figes
Though she mentions such writers as Eliza Haywood
and Mary Davys
, she begins her detailed discussion with the 1790s (a time which twenty years on would be regarded as somewhat late in the history...
