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 Fullerton's version Charlotte Christine was raised in an idyllic childhood as a wife for royalty before finding herself abused, isolated, and threatened in the Russian Court, caught amidst intrigues between her husband and father-in-law...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sarah Murray
The material already printed in 1799 was considerably re-arranged in 1803, and some of it moved to the second volume. SM
opens by describing the better route she has discovered for leaving London. She...
Intertextuality and Influence
Hester Lynch Piozzi
She may have been acting on the advice of Johnson
, who believed that social and domestic records were regrettably rare.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.
70
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Latter
ML
here accords honorific citation to Dryden
and Pope
,
Latter, Mary. Pro & Con. T. Lowndes.
31-2
repeated mockery to the over-long words she sees as favoured by Dr Johnson
,
The novel combines domestic humour and social satire. The courtship of Eglantine Fortescue and the young officer Augustus Fitzroy is almost overshadowed by the broad-brush picture of their families and friends. Eglantine incurs disapproval first...
Intertextuality and Influence
Cicely Hamilton
CH
took as her text a couplet by Samuel Johnson
: The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, / For we that live to please, must please to live.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(5 March 1924): 12
While thoroughly...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth B. Lester
This work quotes Cowper
on the title-page. The short stories (genuinely short this time) include A Few Days from My Journal (which opens with Johnson
's well-known remark to Boswell
about the pleasure of driving...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ellen Johnston
In contrast to the life-writings of her working-class contemporary Hannah Cullwick
, EJ
's autobiography is remarkably self-reflexive and literary. She says that an account of her life in Dundee alone, her trials, disappointments, joys...
Instructor
David Garrick
He attended the tiny, unsuccessful school on which Samuel Johnson
lost his wife's money.
Friends, Associates
W. B. Yeats
Several women writers and public figures played very important roles in Yeats's life. Lady Gregory
(whom he first met in London in 1894 and whose close friend he became in 1896) played a crucial role...
Friends, Associates
Oliver Goldsmith
Goldsmith met and became a friend and associate of Edmund Burke
, Samuel Johnson
, Sir Joshua Reynolds
, and others belonging to the Club, of which he was a founder member. He was a...
Friends, Associates
Mary Jones
Samuel Johnson
, visiting Oxford, boasted to MJ
of the closeness of his friendship with Charlotte Lennox
; a few months later Jones wrote to Lennox, to say she would be visiting London soon.
Isles, Duncan. “The Lennox Collection (Continued)”. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol.
19
, No. 1, pp. 36-60.
42-3
Friends, Associates
Mary Palmer
MP
and her husband
entertained her brother Joshua
, sister Frances
, and Samuel Johnson
, sharing the hostess honours for several days with her married sister Elizabeth Johnson, who lived nearby.
Clifford, James L. Dictionary Johnson. McGraw-Hill.
282-5
Friends, Associates
Hester Mulso Chapone
Hester Mulso became a member of Samuel Richardson
's circle (as depicted in the well-known drawing by Susanna Highmore
), and engaged with him in lively debate on the position, status, and duties of unmarried...
Friends, Associates
Anna Williams
AW
's father knew many of the leading figures in the science of his day, and she probably met them through him. Her celebrated friendship with Samuel Johnson
seems to have begun through his interest...