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.
In the house of an aunt she was surprised to find novels (particularly those of Richardson
) a topic of conversation,
Schimmelpenninck, Mary Anne. Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck. Editor Hankin, Christiana C., Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts.
1: 118
and that (in her own judgement) Fielding
and Smollett
, and various...
Education
Rebecca Harding Davis
Influenced by her mother's linguistic virtuosity and her father's storytelling and love of classic literature, Rebecca grew up well acquainted with early American history (whose evidence lay close at hand) and with the stories...
Education
Alice Meynell
In the summer of 1852 Elizabeth and Alice Thompson (later AM
) began their education under their father's instruction. Recording her daughters' lessons, Christiana Thompson writes, Dear little angels do their writing . ....
Education
Pearl S. Buck
Mr Kung despised fiction and the Sydenstricker library contained only the supposedly factual Plutarch
's Lives and Foxe
's Book of Martyrs, but Pearl read fiction avidly in both Chinese and English, devouring Shakespeare
Education
Mary Wesley
Mary acquired various country skills, like milking (by hand), butter-making, and of course riding.
Wesley, Mary, and Kim Sayer. Part of the Scenery. Bantam.
19, 20
She was not expected, however, to need to acquire skills that were marketable. Initially she was educated by about...
Education
Charlotte Dempster
In early adulthood CD
continued to study on her own: she read the poetry of Sir Walter Scott
and often spent her mornings reading history, writing, or drawing.
Dempster, Charlotte. The Manners of My Time. Editor Knox, Alice, Grant Richards.
Some Recollections of Jean Ingelow and Her Early Friends. Kennikat Press.
150-1
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Peters, Maureen. Jean Ingelow: Victorian Poetess. Boydell.
23
Education
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Her next school was the Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentlemen (a school that counted its pupils in single figures and was run by a trio of very young sisters). Frances was good at...
Education
Beatrix Potter
Beatrix, educated at home and six years older than her brother, was a solitary child. She had few toys; but she became deeply interested in science, and was also, from an early age, devoted to...
Education
Lydia Maria Child
At fifteen she read Paradise Lost (with her brother's encouragement) and was delighted with its grandeur and sublimity, but was bold enough to criticise Milton
for assert[ing] the superiority of his own sex in rather...
Education
Florence Dixie
Lady Florence was at first educated at home in Scotland. After a first, unsuccessful attempt to place her in a convent she had, in France, an Irish Catholic governess whom she calls Miss O'Leary...
Education
Frances Browne
FB
's blindness meant that she did not have a formal education, and she very early felt the want of it.
Browne, Frances. The Star of Attéghéi; the Vision of Schwartz; and Other Poems. Edward Moxon.
ix
From the age of seven, when she heard a sermon she did not...
She was also taught, perhaps between schools, by her father. By the age of eleven she had devoured the poetry of the British Classics from Chaucer
to Beattie
,
Peet, Henry. Mrs. Charles Tinsley, Novelist and Poet. Butler and Tanner.
She could read by four-and-a-half, and recalls an early admiration for hymns by Anna Letitia Barbauld
and Maria Edgeworth
. Julius Cæsar, the first Shakespearean
play that she saw, left a lasting impression. Later...
