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.
AB
was instrumental in securing the papers of John Leyden
(linguist, poet, and friend of Walter Scott
, with whom she had had some kind of close relationship) for the use of James Morton
...
Occupation
Fanny Kemble
She toured England, Scotland, and Ireland with the Covent Garden Theatre
company, met Walter Scott
, and was feted by Lady Morgan
in Dublin.
Marshall, Dorothy. Fanny Kemble. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
54-6
In May of 1831 she was presented...
Author summary
Isabella Beeton
IB
was the author of the classic book of household management which became a standard reference work for generations following her death—probably, says critic Michael Mason
, less common only than the Bible, Shakespeare and...
Author summary
Christian Isobel Johnstone
CIJ
is remarkable both for her pioneering of the Scottish national tale (in the early nineteenth century, neck and neck with Sir Walter Scott
) and for her long-continuing career in journalism, as contributor and...
Author summary
Elizabeth Meeke
EM
, who was not correctly identified until 2013, was unusually prolific among novelists (twenty-six titles), children's writers, and translators of the Romantic period. (She also compiled an anthology for children.) She issued through the...
Publishing
Margaret Holford
Margaret Holford the younger
sent some Lines Occasioned by Reading the Poetical Works of Walter Scott to this admired figure some years before the appearance of her own Scott-influenced poem, Wallace.
Seward, Anna. Letters of Anna Seward. Editor Constable, Archibald, Vol.
6 vols.
, A. Constable.
1: 252-3
(Her...
Publishing
Harriet Martineau
HM
published in Tait's Edinburgh MagazineThe Achievements of the Genius of Scott; a second article on the same topic appeared a month later.
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press.
3: 492
Publishing
Harriet Martineau
She had started it on her previous birthday, 12 June 1838. John Murray
had solicited a novel from her—which would have been the first his firm
had published since Scott
—only to reject it when...
Publishing
Susan Ferrier
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.
Publishing
Anna Seward
AS
had been in some kind of publishing negotiation with Constable
of Edinburgh for several years. Archibald Constable
visited her in April 1807. After this he consulted John Murray
in London, who advised him against...
Publishing
Felicia Hemans
FH
's poems regularly appeared in periodicals, including The New Monthly Magazine from 1823. Publishing with Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine from 1827, she asked William Blackwood
to match her rate of more than a pound per...
Reception
Anne Grant
AG
's reputation was such (after the publication of the Memoirs of an American Lady) that she was one of those confidently stated to be the author of Scott
's Waverley when that novel...
Reception
Emma Robinson
Henry Fothergill Chorley
in his Athenæum review called the novel a tale of terror and adventure, just right for Christmas reading.
FH
's circulation in her lifetime rivalled that of her most prominent male contemporaries. With sales of about 18,000 volumes, she outsold Coleridge
and Wordsworth
, if not Scott
and Byron
. She proved, as...
Reception
Lady Charlotte Bury
Walter Scott
used verses by her to head a chapter in The Heart of Midlothian, 1818.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
