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.
Both in an Address to the Editor and in a series of explanatory footnotes, AO
positions herself on the one hand as a historian with a proper regard for available evidence, and on the other...
Textual Production
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
Education
Bessie Rayner Parkes
BRP
taught herself to read. By the age of seven she had completed all of Scott
's novels.
Crawford, Anne, editor. The Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women. Europa Publications.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan.
265
She learnt both French and German with remarkable ease.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan.
265
She developed a passionate admiration, and...
Education
Frances Mary Peard
However, according to her biographer, Mary J. Y. Harris
, she was largely self-taught. Her mother never restricted her reading, and she later remembered tackling at an early age such classics as Scott
, Shakespeare
Education
Winifred Peck
The young Knoxes had three governesses in two years, which later made WP
feel guilty as she imagined these women weeping at night over the children's unruliness or the jealousy of the family nanny. Meanwhile...
Education
Winifred Peck
It was probably Mary A. Marzials
' anthology Gems of English Poetry which made poetry the only lesson the Knoxes disliked. Winifred felt that Hemans
's boy on the burning deck cut a poor figure...
Family and Intimate relationships
Anne Plumptre
By contrast, the youngest sister, Jemima
(baptised at Cambridge on 29 December 1769), who also became a novelist, seems to have lost contact with most of her family; not one of them appears on her...
Reception
Jane Porter
The ODNB judged the London scenes (where the hero is living privately in London and trying to make a living out of selling his painting) the most convincing in the book.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Again her work was extremely popular. The French translation was banned by Napoleon
because of its portrayal of nationalist resistance to conquest.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
The notice in the Critical Review began by using this novel as a peg for a defence of good novels in general, especially, apparently, those dealing with national histories. The existence of many incompetent novelists...
Friends, Associates
Anna Maria Porter
The young Walter Scott
was a neighbour of the Porters in Edinburgh and a childhood friend to AMP
and Jane.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
265
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
under Jane Porter
In London while Anna Maria was growing up, and even after...
Friends, Associates
Jane Porter
The Porters' mother lived a busy social life on limited means, and JP
kept up this tradition. Sir Walter Scott
was an early friend.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
265
When she moved to London, JP
included among her friends...
Education
Beatrix Potter
Beatrix, educated at home and six years older than her brother, was a solitary child. She had few toys; but she became deeply interested in science, and was also, from an early age, devoted to...
Occupation
Barbara Pym
This work gave her considerable free time, most of which she spent reading such authors as Austen
, Johnson
, Scott
, and Trollope
. She particularly admired the forms of Mansfield
's published scrapbook...
Literary responses
Ann Radcliffe
Many reviewers wrongly supposed that Gaston de Blondeville was derivative from Scott
's recent and very successful Kenilworth, which uses the same material.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press.
194-5
Talfourd
, who called it a ghost story, judged it...