Elizabeth Hamilton

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Standard Name: Hamilton, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Hamilton
Nickname: Eliza Hamilton
In her own day EH was best known and loved for My Ain Fireside (a song expressive of national Scottish feeling and the glorification of the domestic) and for Cottagers of Glenburnie, 1808, a novel of domestic improvement. In later generations her satire on the Jacobins has got her type-cast as an unmitigated conservative. In fact her writings in many genres (poems, novels, essays, biography, and writings on education, religion, and philosophy) combine a scholarly and an ironic bent, and her conservatism includes a strong streak of feminism. Her novels make less use than most of the marriage plot, and she presents single women as strong and admirable.
Portrait of Elizabeth Hamilton by Sir Henry Raeburn. The dark but vivid painting suits her olive skin and curly, dark (unpowdered) hair. She is wearing red velvet with a matching kerchief on her head, and holding some small object in her hands.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Helen Maria Williams
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.
140
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Helena Wells
The body of her work takes up her favourite topic: the difficulties of women as wage-earners—difficulties which impede the progress of my own sex to independence—and what should be done to solve them...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Ellen Weeton
Though she scorned circulating libraries, her recorded comments on books include praise for Anna Maria Porter 's The Lake of Killarney, Mary Ann Hanway 's Ellinor, and Elizabeth Hamilton 's The Cottagers of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sarah Tytler
The book is prefaced by a glossary which informs the reader that Edinburgh is nicknamed Auld Reekie, that to gowl is to weep noisily, to rug and rive is to carry off by violence...
Intertextuality and Influence Tabitha Tenney
Neither the Cumberland episode, nor her father's death, nor her own serious illness brought on by grief, can change Dorcasina. She next fancies that a new servant, John Brown, is a lover in disguise. (The...
Literary responses Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Professionally, Morgan was a notable success. She was a canny businesswoman, never afraid to assert herself against an established publisher or seek out a new one. This paid off in a remarkable level of earnings...
Textual Features Lady Louisa Stuart
LLS 's letters to Scott show her to have been a trusted and perceptive critic of his novels, which she often read before publication. On The Heart of Mid-Lothian she sent him a major critique...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Smith
They met and spent time with Elizabeth Hamilton and her sister, Katherine Blake , when these two visited the Lakes in May 1802.
Smith, Elizabeth. Fragments, in Prose and Verse. Editor Bowdler, Henrietta Maria, Richard Cruttwell.
157
Mrs Smith felt that the Quaker poet Thomas Wilkinson was one...
Friends, Associates Mary Martha Sherwood
MMS judged Anna Seward to be greedy for flattery, especially from the opposite sex. In 1799 she met Hannah More , who was then at the height of her fame and to whom admittance was...
Friends, Associates Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
She knew other distinguished writers from the previous generation too, and her friends both before and after her marriage included many in the world of literature. A couple of years after this she spent the...
Textual Production Emma Parker
EP 's Aretas. A Novel, published this year, appears not to have survived.
Without having seen a copy of this work, which is unlisted in OCLC, it is reasonable to suppose that it...
Textual Production Carola Oman
CO issued her next historical biography, Elizabeth of Bohemia, about the Scottish-born Electress Palatine who was a great patron and a force in European politics during the seventeenth century.
Elizabeth Hamilton had planned...
Education Mary Russell Mitford
MRM was said to have learned to read by the time she was three. In January 1806 she got through fifty-five volumes, including books by Sarah Harriet Burney , Maria Edgeworth , Elizabeth Hamilton ,...
Textual Features Elizabeth Meeke
The orphan hero, Theodore, is brought up among a collection of intellectual eccentrics, reminiscent of such satirical novels as those of Elizabeth Hamilton .
Family and Intimate relationships Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan
MBCL 's son, Richard, who eventually succeeded his father as second Earl Lucan , was born on 4 December 1764. He was a cultured art-collector, and married a divorcee with whom he had had an...

Timeline

1785: Dr George Gregory (friend of Elizabeth Hamilton)...

Building item

1785

Dr George Gregory (friend of Elizabeth Hamilton ) published with Joseph JohnsonEssays Historical and Moral, which expresses feminist and reforming sentiments.

1805: George Nicholson compiled and published at...

Women writers item

1805

George Nicholson compiled and published at Poughnill near Ludlow in ShropshireThe Advocate and Friend of Woman, an anthology of excerpts.

1816: Thomas Love Peacock published his anonymous...

Writing climate item

1816

Thomas Love Peacock published his anonymous satirical novelHeadlong Hall.

1901: The publication of George Douglas Brown's...

Writing climate item

1901

The publication of George Douglas Brown 's novel The House with the Green Shutters marked the first attack on the Scottish school of fiction that was afterwards known as Kailyard.

Texts

Hamilton, Elizabeth. Essays on the Mind. Manners and Miller, 1813.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. Exercises in Religious Knowledge. 1809.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. Hints to the Patrons of Schools. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, edited by Pamela Perkins and Shannon Russell, Broadview, 1999, pp. 7-50.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. Letters of a Hindoo Rajah. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. Letters of a Hindoo Rajah. Editors Perkins, Pamela and Shannon Russell, Broadview, 1999.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. Letters on Education. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1801.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. Letters to the Daughter of a Nobleman. T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1806.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. Memoirs of Modern Philosophers. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1800.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. Memoirs of Modern Philosophers. Editor Grogan, Claire, 2000.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. Memoirs of the Life of Agrippina, the Wife of Germanicus. G. and J. Robinson, 1804.
Hamilton, Elizabeth. The Cottagers of Glenburnie. Manners and Miller, and S. Cheyne, 1808.