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.
Temple Bar magazine printed SF
's Recollections of Sir Walter Scott
, unpublished in her lifetime.
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.
Family and Intimate relationships
Susan Ferrier
The first important position of James Ferrier
, SF
's father, was as Writer to the Signet. Later he was appointed Principal Clerk of Session and became estate manager to the Duke of Argyll
...
Textual Production
Susan Ferrier
SF
only published under the condition that she remained anonymous, hiding her authorship for fear that she would be condemned as unladylike. If I was suspected of being accessory to such foul deeds my brothers...
Literary responses
Susan Ferrier
Clavering
urged SF
not to alter (presumably not to tone down) her Lady McLaughlan portrait. The novel's immediate success was crucially boosted by the praise of Sir Walter Scott
. SF
read it aloud to...
Literary responses
Susan Ferrier
Again SF
met with success on balance. The Athenæum, however, naming Miss Ferriar as author, stated that the success of Marriage, backed by the good-natured commendation of Sir Walter Scott
, induced the...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Fenton
Fenton sets out to paint a a familiar picture of the everyday occurrences, manners, and habits of life of persons undistinguished either by wealth or fame
Fenton, Elizabeth. The Journal of Mrs. Fenton. Editor Lawrence, Sir Henry, Edward Arnold.
1-2
in British India. But this is largely unfulfilled...
Wealth and Poverty
Eliza Fay
She died in debt. A substantial collection of books, sold after her death in an auction held to raise money to satisfy her creditors, included works by Sir Walter Scott
, Anna Letitia Barbauld
,...
Reception
Catherine Fanshawe
Anne Grant reported that Francis Jeffrey
was much struck by a critique of Scott
's The Lady of the Lake (published months earlier) that CF
had written in a letter to Grant.
Grant, Anne. Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of Laggan. Editor Grant, John Peter, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.
1: 270
Textual Production
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...
Literary responses
Catherine Fanshawe
CF
's immediately posthumous reputation rested, like her writings themselves, on oral tradition. She had the admiration of William Cowper
and Walter Scott
, as well as Joanna Baillie
, Anne Grant
, and Mary Berry
Textual Production
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
George Eliot
As she moved on intellectually from her religious youth, she became steeped in the Higher Criticism of the Bible, and increasingly interested in alternative explanatory systems, particularly those of social science—including Herbert Spencer
...
Textual Production
George Eliot
Many early extant letters of GE
's date from her unhappy, adolescent, Evangelical period, and have a tone of self-righteousness and censoriousness of others and of herself which is not pleasant to modern readers. In...
Intertextuality and Influence
George Eliot
Those aspects of the book which readers insisted on seeing separately as the Jewish element, as she herself called them, were the hardest for GE
to write. She sought to naturalize the scholarly, Judaic...
Cultural formation
George Eliot
She was acquainted with a multiplicity of sects, since many flourished in Warwickshire. From this time she deliberately dressed unfashionably, became censorious of the behaviour of others, and began reading more deeply in religion. Fear...
