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.
AOK
's unusual historical novel, which appeared several years before anything comparable by Sydney Morgan
, Christian Isobel Johnstone
, or Sir Walter Scott
, seems to carry within itself the seeds of the national...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Strutt
The story's omniscient narrator offers historical explanations as the tale proceeds (noting, for instance, that women's status, unlike women's education, has not improved since the fourteenth century). ES
says she hopes to encourage her readers...
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Margaret Oliphant
MO
attacks the sensation novel, a genre of fiction which she judges to be low in subject-matter (especially in its handling of sexual material), low in class connotations, and associated chiefly with women. Her idea...
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Rosamund Marriott Watson
Betty Barnes, The Book Burner was probably inspired by Walter Scott
's account of a cook who used her employer's manuscript collection to fuel a fire and line pie-tins.
Blain, Virginia, editor. Victorian Women Poets: A New Annotated Anthology. Longman.
264
Other titles in this volume...
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Margaret Oliphant
This novel relates to her earlier Hester, 1883 and Joyce, 1888. Kirsteen's brutal father (who has been manager of a slave plantation, and goes as far as killing to impose his will on...
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Muriel Jaeger
In an amusing fantasy entitled Trial of Jane Austen the accused stands charged with masquerading as a great writer.
Jaeger, Muriel. Shepherd’s Trade. Arthur H. Stockwell.
118
Pompous or foolish witnesses accuse her of ignoring national politics, social problems, sex, professional careerism...
Macaulay, Rose. Letters to a Friend from Rose Macaulay 1950-1952. Editor Babington Smith, Constance, Fontana.
14
LeFanu notes that it takes the themes of inheritance and unjust accusation so characteristic of the novels of Charlotte Yonge
and Sir Walter Scott
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Ethel Savi
Writing of Savi's attempts to render Indian speech in English, critic Laxmi Moktali
cites Sir Walter Scott
's introduction of Indian words about food and dress, for example, as the beginning of an experiment with...
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Lady Louisa Stuart
LLS
's letters to Scott
show her to have been a trusted and perceptive critic of his novels, which she often read before publication. On The Heart of Mid-Lothian she sent him a major critique...
Though her fascinating, good-hearted, but free-thinking, twenty-year-old, student Baron goes in for solitary rambles like his original (Childe Harold), this habit is less emphasised than his poetry. His verses are not wistful or Romantic but...
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Sarah Green
The plot owes something to Charlotte Lennox
's Female Quixote. The father of Green's heroine has lived through many crazes for novelists: first Burney
, then Radcliffe
, then Owenson
, then Rosa Matilda
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Elizabeth Ham
This is perhaps the most remarkable fictional treatment of the general period of the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland. EH
thus defends her once-controversial subject-matter, and her remarkable empathy with the rebels' position: the tale...
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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
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Amy Levy
She continued: The Jew, as we know him to-day, with his curious mingling of diametrically opposed qualities; his surprising virtues and no less surprising vices; leading his eager, intricate life; living, moving, and having his...
