Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sir Walter Scott
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Standard Name: Scott, Sir Walter
Birth Name: Walter Scott
Titled: Sir Walter Scott
Nickname: The Great Unknown
Used Form: author of Kenilworth
The remarkable career of Walter Scott
began with a period as a Romantic poet (the leading Romantic poet in terms of popularity) before he went on to achieve even greater popularity as a novelist, particularly for his historical fiction and Scottish national tales. His well-earned fame in both these genres of fiction has tended to create the impression that he originated them, whereas in fact women novelists had preceded him in each.
EB
's composition of her sole surviving novel, Wuthering Heights, flowed directly from her Gondal writings and shows much greater continuity with them than her sisters' fiction does. Like theirs, the novel reveals the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ruby M. Ayres
Like her later novels, Richard Chatterton, V.C. is a courtship novel ending happily in marriage. Published only a year into the First World War, it is also an examination, albeit a shallow one, of...
Health
Mary Bryan
MB
(now Bedingfield) sent an anguished appeal to Scott
for an actual gift of money—fifteen pounds—to enable her to see a London specialist about her sight.
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
Friends, Associates
Joanna Baillie
JB
first met Walter Scott
(a very new literary celebrity); she really got to know him by March 1808, when she visited him at 39 Castle Street, Edinburgh.
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Archon Books.
21-2
Friends, Associates
Lady Anne Barnard
LAB
's later social life in London is mentioned in the diary of Frances Burney
.
Graham, Henry Grey. Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century. Adam and Charles Black.
345
Sir Walter Scott
renewed his early acquaintance with her after fifty years.
Friends, Associates
Lady Charlotte Bury
During her first marriage Lady Charlotte frequently entertained the literary celebrities of her day.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
She was a friend and patron of Sir Walter Scott
, and a friend (with her daughters) of the exiled Italian...
She was amused at his appearance and manner: her likening him to a Walter Scott
character might particularly have displeased him. He looked a cross between a Dominie Sampson and a starved R. C. curate...
Friends, Associates
Lady Louisa Stuart
LLS
was introduced as a young woman into the Bluestocking circle. Her friendship with the younger Louisa Clinton
produced some attractive letters and that with Frances, Lady Douglas
, produced a remarkable memoir. Lady Douglas's...
Friends, Associates
Mary Martha Sherwood
Meeting the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry
, MMS
discussed with her the danger of celebrity, for females especially, and their respective temptations.
Sherwood, Mary Martha, and Henry Sherwood. The Life of Mrs. Sherwood. Editor Kelly, Sophia, Darton.
Holford seems to have cared about making influential friends, and succeeded in doing so although she lived in the provinces. She established a correspondence with Sir Walter Scott
, and although their relationship got off...
Friends, Associates
Grace Aguilar
Bowles and her circle likened the young woman who enjoyed dancing and singing to Walter Scott
's Flora McIvor.
Friends, Associates
Lady Eleanor Butler
Among their many visitors (apart from the local gentry, with whom they duly established links), close friends included Anna Seward
, Henrietta Maria Bowdler
(who wrote mock-flirtatiously of LEB
as her veillard [sic] or old...
Friends, Associates
Alison Cockburn
She wrote that some of my most steady friends thro' Life were my childhood companions, girls she had been at school with.
Cockburn, Alison. Letters and Memoirs. Editor Craig-Brown, Thomas, David Douglas.
2
Besides Ramsay (whom, too, she had known since her girlhood), Burns
