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.
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
Mary Ann Browne
The title-poem is a lengthy, often highly effective narrative about Ignatia's experience of learning, love, marriage, motherhood, loss, and abandonment. Ignatia's mother is Palestinian, and after the death of both her parents she experiments with...
Reception
Adelaide O'Keeffe
The Monthly Review was on the whole complimentary. It judged the novel to be original and entertaining, though it complained of a few Hibernicisms and grammatical errors. It concentrated, oddly, on the Don Zulvago plot...
Publishing
Susanna Watts
It has not been traced. Edgeworth also reported: My father
is afraid, though she has considerable talents, to recommend her to Johnson
, lest she should not answer.
Watts, Susanna. Scrapbook.
The Edgeworths were apparently not prepared to...
Publishing
Mary Robinson
The Morning Post carried MR
's Lines Addressed to a Beautiful Infant Inscribed to Mrs Fenwick.
Close, Anne. “Into the Public: The Sexual Heroine in Eliza Fenwick’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl="m">Secresy</span> and Mary Robinson’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The Natural Daughter</span>”;. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol.
17
, No. 1, pp. 35-52.
37-8
Occupation
Mary Hays
At Tansor near Oundle she again worked as a teacher; Eliza Fenwick
had been advising her (since the cost of living as a boarder was so high) to find a live-in position looking after a...
Occupation
William Godwin
The imprint M. J. Godwin and Company was launched the following year. The business flourished, becoming almost a literary salon like that of Joseph Johnson
: visitors included Germaine de Staël
. It remained, however...
Occupation
William Godwin
This was just after Eliza Fenwick
left their employ.
Literary responses
Mary Robinson
The Critical Review said that from the first page it had expected something superior, but had been disappointed: even a few pieces of elegant poetry
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2nd ser. 28 (1799): 477
could not redeem the novel....
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Hays
MH
's preface explains her intention of examining the power of the passions in action, on the model of Godwin
's Caleb Williams. She also compliments Ann Radcliffe
. She defends the worth of...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Ham
This publication, written in charming verses, makes the parts of speech perform appropriate functions. The articles, A and The, stand at the door. Nouns march in. The Interjection has the last word(s): Her surprise was...
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...
Timeline
14 March 1786: An order was established to prevent wards...
Building item
14 March 1786
An order was established to prevent wards of the Upper
and Lower Orphanage
s in India (mixed-race boys) from travelling to Britain for education.
4 April 1788: At about the time that he lost his religious...
Writing climate item
4 April 1788
At about the time that he lost his religious faith, William Godwin
began keeping a diary, which he continued almost daily until 26 March 1836, only two weeks before he died.
January 1812: The Theatre Royal first opened in Bridgetown,...
Building item
January 1812
The Theatre Royal
first opened in Bridgetown, Barbados.
Paul, Lissa. “Eliza Fenwick (1766-1840): Morality, Motherhood and the Colonial Encounter in Early Nineteenth Century Bridgetown”. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Vol.
57
, pp. 98-112.
103
6 March 1834: The settlement of York, population 9,250,...
National or international item
6 March 1834
The settlement of York, population 9,250, became Toronto, Upper Canada'sfirst incorporated municipality, with a mayor, aldermen and powers of taxation.
Gee, Marcus. “Moment in Time: March 6, 1834”. Globe and Mail, p. A2.
Texts
Fenwick, Eliza, and Charles Parsons Knight. Infantine Stories. Tabart, 1810.
Hays, Mary et al. “Introduction”. The Fate of the Fenwicks, edited by Annie F. Wedd, Methuen, 1927, p. ix - xvi.
Grundy, Isobel, and Eliza Fenwick. “Introduction and Appendices”. Secresy, 2ndnd ed, Broadview, 1998, pp. 7 - 34, 361.
Fenwick, Eliza. Lessons for Children. M. J. Godwin, 1809.
Fenwick, Eliza. Mary and her Cat. Tabart, 1804, http://Very rare. The Bodleian has two copies, UCLA one, mutilated.
Fenwick, Eliza. Presents for Good Boys. Tabart, 1805.
Fenwick, Eliza. Presents for Good Girls. Tabart, 1804.
Fenwick, Eliza. Rays from the Rainbow. M. J. Godwin, 1812.
Fenwick, Eliza. Secresy. William Lane and others, 1795.