Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Eliza Fenwick
-
Standard Name: Fenwick, Eliza
Birth Name: Eliza Jaco
Married Name: Eliza Fenwick
Pseudonym: A Woman
Pseudonym: E. F.
Pseudonym: the Rev. David Blair
EF
, now known (after long obscurity) for her single, remarkable surviving epistolary novel of the radical school of the 1790s, also wrote characterful children's books and extremely vivid letters which extend several decades into the nineteenth century. Her second adult novel never materialised.
The Porters' mother lived a busy social life on limited means, and JP
kept up this tradition. Sir Walter Scott
was an early friend.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
265
When she moved to London, JP
included among her friends...
Friends, Associates
Mary Robinson
MR
remained devoted to the idea of female friendship. She met the artist Maria Cosway
in France and they became firm friends. In her last months she wrote to the novelist Elizabeth Gunning
to sympathise...
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan.
261, 288
Friends, Associates
Mary Hays
This was her most formative and most famous friendship. She had approached Wollstonecraft after the latter published Vindication of the Rights of Woman early that same year. Wollstonecraft proved a valuable professional mentor. Another relationship...
Friends, Associates
Mary Wollstonecraft
At this time MW
's achievements were admired by Southey
, Coleridge
, and many English Jacobins who felt themselves oppressed. Her friends included Elizabeth Inchbald
, Mary Robinson
, and more warmly Eliza Fenwick
Friends, Associates
Thomas Holcroft
TH
knew most of the English radicals of the day. For years before this he had been a particularly close friend of William Godwin
, who regarded him as a mentor. The two men saw...
Friends, Associates
Mary Lamb
ML
's friends (many of them made through Charles) included Eliza Fenwick
(whose husband
and Charles drank together), Henry Crabb Robinson
, and many more canonical members of the Romantic movement. Charles was close to...
Education
Elizabeth Grant
While the family resided in London, theatre-going provided another much-welcomed form of education and entertainment. EG
once attended a production of The Caravan, featuring John Kemble
, in which Carlo, the famous Newfoundland...
Education
Fanny Holcroft
FH
's upbringing was purposely and radically progressive. Eliza Fenwick
's intention of bringing her own children up without belief in God was shaken when she found herself disgusted & shocked at the blind, coarse...
Dedications
Mary Hays
It was published by Simpkin and Marshall
, dedicated to Eliza Fenwick
in these words: While the Atlantic rolls between us, allow me, dear friend, to gratify my feelings, by addressing to you this little...
Anthologization
Dorothy Wordsworth
DW
sent to Charles and Mary Lamb, by June 1804, some little scraps for a children's verse anthology which Eliza Fenwick
was compiling, which was published the Tabart
the next year as Songs for...