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.
In the copyright row provoked by unauthorised reprints by the Edinburgh publisher Alexander Donaldson
, CM
began by asking what practices would benefit literature, and concluded that publishers needed to be able to count on...
Textual Features
Mary Scott
MS
brings her list up to date with significant women writers who have published since the appearance of The Feminead. Her information is not perfect—she credits Anna Williams
with some works actually written by...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Burnet
This journal includes much philosophical writing. EB
's detailed critique of the mystic Antoinette de Bourignon
(correspondent of Anna Maria van Schurman
) embodies an ingenious rational explanation of enthusiasm or belief in a divine...
Textual Features
Sarah Fielding
This is a work of fiction, not documentary. It relates the stories of four ex-prostitutes sympathetically, presenting a strong argument for social reform. According to scholar Katherine Binhammer
, it is the most feminist among...
Textual Features
Anne Mozley
These attractive essays in belles lettres employ a relaxed, personal speaking voice (which does not, however, reveal its gender), which puts forward literary opinions with casual confidence. Many essays (like Samuel Johnson
's before them)...
Textual Features
Mary Hays
The title-page quotes Johnson
on the efficacy of education: Let it be remembered, that the efficacy of ignorance has been long tried, and has not produced the consequences expected. Let knowledge therefore take its turn...
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
The Introductory History of Sweden, from The Middle of the Twelfth Century is in effect an essay on biography and historiography. It argues the importance of biography, and the influence which even minor figures exercise...
Textual Production
Mary Bosanquet Fletcher
Mary Bosanquet (later Fletcher)
wrote almost weekly to the ex-fashionable preacher Dr William Dodd
(in prison for forgery) until he was hanged, out of concern for his soul.
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...
Textual Production
Anna Williams
The Gentleman's Magazine published proposals, written for AW
by Samuel Johnson
, for a miscellany or collection of poems and essays which would include her own work along with some pieces by other people.
Larsen, Lyle. Dr. Johnson’s Household. Archon Books.
11-12, 16-17, 121
Textual Production
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...
Textual Production
Frances Reynolds
Most . . . but not all
Hill, George Birkbeck, editor. Johnsonian Miscellanies. Clarendon Press.
1: xi
of FR
's Recollections of Dr. Johnson was printed by John Wilson Croker
in his edition of Boswell
's Life of Samuel Johnson, as one...
Textual Production
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...
Textual Production
Susannah Dobson
Samuel Johnson
supposed, nearly a decade after its production, that The Life of Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné, 1772, was by SD
: actually it was the last work of Sarah Scott
, who always published anonymously.
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, Princeton University Press.