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.
Sarah Siddons
, who starred in the play, much admired it.
Dowd, Maureen A. “’By the Delicate Hand of a Female’: Melodramatic Mania and Joanna Baillie’s Spectacular Tragedies”. European Romantic Review, Vol.
9
, No. 4, pp. 469-00.
480
But JB
felt that reviewers cooled towards it once they knew the author was an unknown woman. John any-body would have stood higher...
Dedications
Joanna Baillie
It was published with a dedication to Walter Scott
. Produced as a melodrama at the Surrey Theatre
in summer 1817, it had an excellent run of thirty-four nights.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
1: 168
Intertextuality and Influence
Joanna Baillie
JB
says she took the topic of Witchcraft from a scene in Scott
's Bride of Lammermuir in which disgruntled old women wish the devil would give them a helping hand. (Scott does not mention...
Literary responses
Joanna Baillie
When Baillie re-read her own Witchcraft as a work in progress she wrote: I am inclined to think well of it. Renfrew witches upon a polite stage! Will such a thing ever be endorsed!
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...
Literary responses
Jane Austen
Sir Walter Scott
recorded in his journal on 14 March 1826 a judgement which has become famous: read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and...
Literary responses
Jane Austen
Emma received eight reviews in English: more than any other Austen novel. Murray
sounded apologetic as he invited Walter Scott to review it (It wants incident and romance does it not?).
Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. Penguin Viking.
252
For...
Travel
Cecil Frances Alexander
During her youth, the future CFA
traveled to Edinburgh where she met Sir Walter Scott
, and watched the famous Scottish landscape painter, Rev. John Thomson
, brother to her uncle Thomas Thomson
, at...
Friends, Associates
Cecil Frances Alexander
The writers whom CFA
most admired during her childhood were Scott
, Gray
, and, to a lesser extent, Wordsworth
and Byron
.
Alexander, Cecil Frances. “Preface”. Poems, edited by William Alexander, Macmillan, p. v - xxix.
LA
, dining with Walter Scott
, was pleased that though she herself went unnoticed, Scott devoted considerable attention to her aunt Barbauld
.
Aikin, Lucy. Memoirs, Miscellanies and Letters. Editor Le Breton, Philip Hemery, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green.
98-9
Textual Production
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.
Friends, Associates
Grace Aguilar
Bowles and her circle likened the young woman who enjoyed dancing and singing to Walter Scott
's Flora McIvor.
Textual Features
Grace Aguilar
GA
's representation of Jews and Jewish history was profoundly influenced by novelists, pre-eminently Walter Scott
, and by historians including Americans Washington Irving
and William H. Prescott
.
Ragussis, Michael. Figures of Conversion: "The Jewish Question" and English National Identity. Duke University Press.
160
Intertextuality and Influence
Grace Aguilar
The central character is the undowered girl Florence Leslie—so called because of her birth in Italy—whose high-minded principles have been fuelled by indiscriminate
Aguilar, Grace. Woman’s Friendship. D. Appleton and Company.
13
reading in history, poetry, and romance at an early age...
