Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Delarivier Manley
-
Standard Name: Manley, Delarivier
Birth Name: Delarivier Manley
Married Name: Delarivier Manley
Nickname: Dela
Indexed Name: Mary de la Riviere Manley
Indexed Name: Mary Delarivier Manley
Pseudonym: Melpomene
Pseudonym: Thalia
Pseudonym: Delia
Pseudonym: The Translator of the New Atalantis
Pseudonym: Rivella
Used Form: Delarivière Manley
DM
was a pioneer in many fields: poetry, drama, journalism, and fiction, and the genres with which the fiction of her period interlocked: letters, soft pornography, satire, secret history, romance autobiography, and political polemic. She was proud of being first in the field on the Tory side during the pamphlet wars of Queen Anne's reign. As critic Paula McDowell
remarks, her writing identity was shaped by the new concept of print culture as an industry, an employer of labour.
McDowell, Paula. The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730. Clarendon.
EH
's preface defends the moral effects of realistic fiction, of imperfect heroes and heroines drawn with faults as well as virtues, without poetical descriptions or rhapsodic dialogue.
Spedding, Patrick. A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood. Pickering and Chatto.
517
Her publisher specifically commissioned her to...
Textual Features
Robert Southey
Against the trend of the times, RS
aimed for historical interest rather than literary canonicity, compiling in his Specimens of the Later English Poets a collection of representative voices rather than a garland: The taste...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Boyd
EB
offers original, discriminating praise for women's writing: Susanna Centlivre
(her inspiration, she says), Eliza Haywood
(though she regrets her exposure of women's faults), Aphra Behn
, and Delarivier Manley
, whom she calls the...
Residence
Iris Tree
IT
's family moved to Walpole House in Chiswick Mall. Charles II
's mistress Barbara, Lady Castlemaine
(patron of Delarivier Manley
) had lived in this house for some years before her death in...
Reception
Aphra Behn
An anonymous Young Lady (most probably Delarivier Manley
) published a pindaric elegy on AB
, along with another by Nathaniel Lee
.
Mendelson, Sara Heller. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Harvester Press.
182, 216n176
Spencer, Jane. Aphra Behn’s Afterlife. Oxford University Press.
30-1
Reception
Sarah Gardner
George Colman
pursued his enmity against SG
for almost twenty years, twice staging at the Haymarket Theatre
farces in mockery of women dramatists which aim at her, and for each of which he was able...
Publishing
Mary Davys
Alexander Pope
is listed first among non-aristocratic subscribers; others include Soame Jenyns
, Mrs Duncombe (probably mother of the later writer Susanna Duncombe), and John Barber (partner of the late Delarivier Manley
). The Bodleian Library
Publishing
Martha Fowke
MF
may have written The Plain Dealer's elegy on Manley
, published in no. 53 on 21 September 1724 and reprinted in the collected edition in 1730.
Fowke, Martha. “Introduction”. Clio, edited by Phyllis J. Guskin, University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses, pp. 15-50.
This was a translation of her Mémoires de la cour d'Angleterre (1694). No copies have been traced, but Mrs William Henry Arthur
published a new translation of the original French in 1912.
Palmer, Melvin D. “Madame d’Aulnoy in England”. Comparative Literature, Vol.
27
, pp. 237-53.
251, 253
It...
Literary responses
Mary Pix
Jane Spencer
points out that modern criticism has not been appreciative of MP
: Jacqueline Pearson
has said that she deals in conventional male stereotypes and gives women no more air time than do male...
Literary responses
Sarah Chapone
SC
's friend and printer Richardson
saw her project in a different and far more simple light than she did: as the administering by a good woman of an antidote to the Poison shed by...
Literary responses
Mary Astell
The Tatler fastens on Astell's age, her virginity, and her assumed incompetence in practical or worldly matters. A further attack followed on 3 September, which linked her name with those of Elstob
and Manley
Literary responses
Elizabeth Boyd
Heather Harper
acknowledges that this is a conservative text, in that it lacks the drive of Delarivier Manley
, for instance, to lambast the vices of high life. She notes, however, that Boyd celebrates secularised...
Leisure and Society
Elizabeth Freke
EF
owned more than a hundred books: well known religious texts, a famous French romance (Gauthier de la Calprenède
's Cassandra, English translation 1652), the publications of her sister, Frances Norton
and her...
Intertextuality and Influence
Eliza Haywood
EH
's socio-political allegory stands virtually alone in her oeuvre in its attempt to reproduce the political instrumentality of Manley
's scandal fiction during the reign of Anne.
Ballaster, Ros. Seductive Forms. Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740. Clarendon Press.
