Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sir Walter Scott
-
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.
As early as 1824 MRM
was asking the advice of friends as to whether they thought she could be a novelist.
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.
2: 29
She added one of her frequent disclaimers: I write merely for remuneration...
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Mary Brunton
She had nearly finished that part of the novel set in Scotland when in July that year Walter Scott
published Waverley. At first she thought she had better cancel her own Scottish scenes, but...
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Sarah Stickney Ellis
In her preface to the poem she outlines theories of poetry, taking much the same approach towards it that she had towards fiction: that verse, like prose, would benefit from attention to simple, everyday life...
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Joanna Baillie
She agreed to do this without payment, though Thomson gave her an Indian shawl when adding to his first request six years later.
Baillie, Joanna. “Introduction”. The Selected Poems of Joanna Baillie, 1762-1851, edited by Jennifer Breen, Manchester University Press, pp. 1-25.
9, 11
Baillie at first demurred, claiming that her talents did not...
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Mary Bryan
Letters exchanged between MB
and Sir Walter Scott
survive for these years; the correspondence, however, may not have ended in 1827.
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
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Flora Thompson
The origin of the title has not been established: it may have come from Sir Walter Scott
's Peveril of the Peak, or from any one of the several place-names in which this element...
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Grace Aguilar
GA
's early historical romance in the style of Scott
, The Days of Bruce, was published posthumously by her mother
.
Galchinsky, Michael. The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer. Wayne State University Press.
139
Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford University Press.
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Emily Gerard
At eleven or twelve EG
began to scribble in secret—poetry of course; for what youthful writer at that stage of his or her existence would stoop to prose! Most of her poems were elegies on...
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Mary Bryan
MB
sent Scott
, in a letter, a poem entitled The Village Maid.
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
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Catherine Fanshawe
According to Sir Walter Scott
, CF
and her sisters were responsible for the first publication, in 1829, of the memoirs of their seventeenth-century ancestor Ann Fanshawe
. He described it as a new publishd...
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Christian Isobel Johnstone
CIJ
published The Cook and Housewife's Manual under the pseudonym Margaret Dods, in honour of Walter Scott
's character from the Cleikum Inn in St. Ronan's Well.
Meg Dods from St. Ronan's Well...
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Amelia Opie
At about the same date she published several Recollections of an Authoress in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. Each of these dealt with a particular author she had known, including Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
and Sir Walter Scott
.
Opie, Amelia. “Introduction”. The Collected Poems of Amelia Alderson Opie, edited by Shelley King and John B. Pierce, Oxford University Press, p. xxxvii - lxx.
lv
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Anne Marsh
Her prefatory praise of Sir Walter Scott
for having made the English understand Scotland, and of Charles Lever
for only now beginning to make the English understand Ireland, has led careless readers to suppose that...
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Anna Seward
AS
, Poetical Works, was posthumously published, edited at her express desire by Walter Scott
(at this date a famous poet but not yet a novelist).
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
3d ser. 20 (1810): 448
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Mary Bryan
MB
(now Bedingfield) accompanied her last surviving letter to Scott
with a poem entitled Return my Muse, which laments her final decline into blindness.
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
