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.
The Domestic Affections was not reviewed, but FH
was slowly gaining recognition. In 1815 Walter Scott
published in the Edinburgh Annual Register a poem by her inspired by his
novel Waverley.
Hemans, Felicia. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Letters, Reception Materials, edited by Susan J. Wolfson, Princeton University Press, p. xiii - xxix; various pages.
xxii, xxxv
Reception
Anna Eliza Bray
Later in life, she was sometimes referred to as the female Walter Scott.
Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, editors. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Garland.
In his History of the English Novel, Ernest Baker
dubbed her a modest imitator of Scott.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 50
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
Felicia Hemans
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.
57
Reception
Alice Dixon Le Plongeon
The The Brooklyn Daily Eagle likened its style to that of Sir Walter Scott
's The Lady of the Lake. This notice is more summary than review, but it notes: So far as possible...
Reception
Emily Frederick Clark
From EFC
's letters to the Royal Literary Fund
it would seem that she entertained a very modest estimate of her own talents. Late in her career, for example, she calls her own works very...
Reception
Emma Robinson
Henry Fothergill Chorley
in his Athenæum review called the novel a tale of terror and adventure, just right for Christmas reading.
The year following her Selected Poems, CAD
won the Lannan Literary Award in the USA, and her work was included in the second volume of Penguin Modern Poets. A decade after that,...
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
Reception
Joanna Baillie
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...
Reception
Celia Moss
Galchinsky
suggests that in Westernising their tales the Mosses sought to engender greater sympathy from non-Jewish readers, a motive the Athenæum also acknowledges. Galchinsky argues further that the sisters' appropriation of the romance genre, in...
Escreet, J. M. The Life of Edna Lyall. Longmans, Green and Co.
53
with her sister and her brother-in-law the Rev. Hampden Jameson
. Their house in College Road, Eastbourne, was a picturesque gabled, red-tiled house, covered with...
Residence
Alison Cockburn
As a widow living in EdinburghAC
was, according to Sarah Tytler
and Jean L. Watson
, a lively cultural influence, serving as a connecting-link between the Edinburgh of Allan Ramsay
and Burns
, and...
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...
