Amelia Opie

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Standard Name: Opie, Amelia
Birth Name: Amelia Alderson
Married Name: Amelia Opie
Pseudonym: N.
AO , who was publishing at the end of the eighteenth century and during the earlier nineteenth century, is best known as a novelist, but was also a dramatist, poet, and short-story writer. The opinions expressed in her writings are often reactionary in gender terms, though she was brought up a Unitarian and later became a Quaker and an active Abolitionist.
Photograph of a painting of Amelia Opie by her husband, John Opie, 1798. She is depicted from the waist up, against a background that is mainly dark with a landscape scene visible in the distance. She wears a simple white dress with a V-shaped neckline that is trimmed with white ruffles. Her brown hair is pulled back, with bangs, and a braid across the top, acting as a headband. She holds a straw hat wrapped in gauzy black fabric in her lap. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Anna Eliza Bray
The work sold well and received favourable reviews.
Bray, Anna Eliza. Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray. Editor Kempe, John A., Chapman and Hall, 1884.
200
In 1845 Amelia Opie wrote to AEB to confess that she had read the book four times and [meant] to read it again.
qtd. in
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research, 1992.
116: 54
She...
Education Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Her aunt Julia was a great influence on BLSB , who through her met Harriet Martineau , Mary Somerville , and Amelia Opie .
Leisure and Society Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Late in life EOB ran a kind of salon which was remarkable for being bohemian and operating on a shoestring: with tea rather than wine (unlike the lavish salons of contemporary society hostesses like Lady Holland
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Clara Balfour
She devotes a chapter to each woman of sterling qualities . . . . in the hope that studious habits, intellectual pursuits, domestic industry, and sound religious principles, may be promoted and conformed by such...
Friends, Associates Lucy Aikin
In her memoirs LA claims to have been acquainted with all the notable literary women of her time. She was a close friend of Joanna Baillie and Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger . Another important friend and...
Textual Production Marguerite Gardiner Countess of Blessington
This work involved her in finding—and engaging in voluminous correspondence with—contributors (who often were or became her personal friends), such as Anna Maria Hall , Felicia Hemans , Amelia Opie , Mary Russell Mitford ,...
Friends, Associates Henry Peter Baron Brougham
Brougham had a number of friends among women writers. He was at primary school in Edinburgh with Susan Ferrier (who, however, declined to acknowledge him later, probably for political reasons). His political work brought him...

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