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.
Her full title is An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear, compared with the Greek and French Dramatic Poets, With some Remarks Upon the Misrepresentations of Mons. de Voltaire.
Montagu, Elizabeth. Essay on Shakespear. J. Dodsley.
title-page
She spelled...
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Elizabeth Heyrick
EH
published Familiar Letters Addressed to Children and Young Persons of the Middle Ranks, with a quotation from Johnson
's Rambler on the title-page.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Familiar Letters Addressed to Children and Young Persons of the Middle Ranks. Darton, Harvey and Darton.
title-page
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Hester Lynch Piozzi
Johnson
was quite groundlessly suspected of helping her with its composition.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.
62-3
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Harriet Corp
She quoted Johnson
on her title-page (on the value and usefulness of familiar histories), and acknowledged her sex in the preface. The book is now rare in both its first edition and the second (published...
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Mary Masters
She had been writing and gathering the material here for at least ten years. The volume was printed for the Author, and dedicated to Lord Burlington
(who subscribed for eight copies). Its publication was...
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Anna Williams
When Boswell
read the elegy On the Death of Stephen Gray
, F. R. S., The Author of the Present Doctrine of Electricity, he at once suspected it was by Johnson
. Williams stoutly...
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Susanna Haswell Rowson
During her work on this novel SHR
was appearing regularly on stage, learning nearly forty different parts, and writing as well three plays, several songs, and an address in verse.
Epley, Steven. “Susanna Rowson’s Bible Abridgement and Its Relationship to Her Most Famous Novel”. American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Conference, Boston, MA.
Parker, Patricia L. Susanna Rowson. Twayne.
15
Her preface (on the...
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Jane Johnson
Her letters to her children are charming, though she seems to have encouraged the kind of rivalry among them which Samuel Johnson
deplored. In November 1753, when Robert was eight, she wrote to him: I...
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Angela Thirkell
Her title comes from an anecdote in Boswell
's The Life of Samuel Johnson, about a man who tried to be a philosopher, but could not manage it because cheerfulness kept breaking in.
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Ann Hatton
The dedication, to Mrs Carsgill
of Holme Lodge, Northumberland, mentions past discussions with her on the topic of the passions, and cites Johnson
's Life of Savage to prove their violence.
Hatton, Ann. Deeds of the Olden Time. A. K. Newman.
prelims
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Frances Reynolds
A manuscript of this in the Hyde Collection (now at the Houghton Library
, Harvard
) bears revisions by Samuel Johnson
, in red ink which he told FR
she could easily remove with water...
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Susanna Haswell Rowson
The following year came A Spelling Dictionary, Divided into Short Lessons, for the Easier Committing to Memory. This was, as the title-page acknowledged, selected from Johnson
's Dictionary. It presented words in groups...