Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Samuel Johnson
-
Standard Name: Johnson, Samuel
Used Form: Dr Johnson
Arriving in eighteenth-century London as one more young literary hopeful from the provinces, SJ
achieved such a name for himself as an arbiter of poetry, of morality (through his Rambler and other periodical essays and his prose fiction Rasselas), of the language (the Dictionary), and of the literary canon (his edition of Shakespeare
and the Lives of the English Poets) that literary history has often typecast him as hidebound and authoritarian. This idea has been facilitated by his ill-mannered conversational dominance in his late years and by the portrait of him drawn by the hero-worshipping Boswell
. In fact he was remarkable for his era in seeing literature as a career open to the talented without regard to gender. From his early-established friendships with Elizabeth Carter
and Charlotte Lennox
to his mentorship of Hester Thrale
, Frances Burney
, and (albeit less concentratedly) of Mary Wollstonecraft
and Henrietta Battier
, it was seldom that he crossed the path of a woman writer without friendly and relatively egalitarian encouragement.
CL
's friends Samuel Johnson
and Samuel Richardson
both saw her as a professional writer with a career to fashion: a career which needed her presence in London, heart of the publishing industry. Richardson...
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Sarah Trimmer
Her spur to beginning it was reading the published personal writings of Samuel Johnson
, which moved her deeply. She wrote it in the most secret hours retreat, and without the least intention ....
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Alice Meynell
In 1911 she edited a selection of writings by Samuel Johnson
.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
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Ellis Cornelia Knight
ECK
published her first work, Dinarbas, a novel which acts as a continuation of Samuel Johnson
's Rasselas.
Kolb, Gwin J. “Forward”. Dinarbas, Colleagues Press.
vii
“Review of Dinarbas by Ellis Cornelia Knight”. The Analytical Review, Vol.
7
, J. Johnson, pp. 189-91.
189
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Charlotte Lennox
She had written most of it by November 1751. With Johnson
as mediator, she consulted Richardson
about revisions, denouement, optimum length (she reduced her plan from three volumes to two), and about her choice of...
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Hester Lynch Piozzi
Back in England, HLP
published her edition of Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.
314
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Jane Warton
Her brother Joseph
(who had been invited to contribute by Samuel Johnson
in March) wrote to her on 26 April beg[ging] your Assistance in giving us some Pictures drawn from real Life. . ....
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Margaret Atwood
Payback opened a new seam in Atwood's continuing output of journalism. Her essay Our faith is fraying in the god of money, in the Financial Times of 13 April 2012, tellingly applies a passage...
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Jane Marcet
The full title is Conversations on the Evidences of Christianity, in which the Leading Arguments of the Best Author are Arranged, Developed, and Connected with Each Other. For the Use of Young Persons and Theological...
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Jan Morris
More than a decade later, in 1978, JM
followed her own portrait of Oxford by editing The Oxford Book of Oxford, a quirky anthology of often very short anecdotes and other excerpts, aimed less...
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Anne Finch
One passage from a long Pindaric ode entitled All is Vanity (present in Finch's early octavo ms and in her printed collection) has broken loose and achieved a life of its own. Whereas the entire...
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Elizabeth Carter
EC
's work, An Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, translated Crousaz' Examen; A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man, by Johnson, 1739, translated Crousaz' second...
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Eliza Haywood
It was advertised as intended for the younger and politer Sort of Ladies,
Haywood, Eliza. The Female Spectator. Xerox University Microfilms.
1: 5
though the reader is conventionally referred to as he. Advertising and other publicity was on a larger scale than...
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Jane Porter
She wrote this novel while living in London.
Porter, Jane. The Scottish Chiefs. Derby and Jackson.
19
In her preface to the first edition (now extremely rare)
Feminist Companion Archive.
she wrote that she had made no hesitation to accept truth as the helpmate of...
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Samuel Beckett
In late 1937 SB
was at work on a play about the relationship between Samuel Johnson
and Hester Thrale
,
Cohn, Ruby. Back to Beckett. Princeton University Press.
ix-x
which he intended to begin with her death (many years, therefore, after the relationship...