Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Catherine Gore
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Standard Name: Gore, Catherine
Birth Name: Catherine Grace Frances Moody
Married Name: Catherine Grace Frances Gore
Nickname: the Poetess
Pseudonym: Albany Poyntz
Pseudonym: The Authoress of The Manners of the Day
CG
wrote during the earlier nineteenth century, for needed cash to help support her family.
Baird, Rebecca Lynne Russell. Catherine Frances Gore, the Silver-Fork School, and "Mothers and Daughters": True Views of Society in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain. University of Arkansas.
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Her publications over more than three decades totalled above 70 titles running to 200 volumes:
Gore, Catherine. “Introduction”. Gore on Stage: The Plays of Catherine Gore, edited by John Franceschina, Garland, pp. 1-34.
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poetry, plays (though not all her eleven plays performed on the London stage were published), tales, and more particularly novels. She also edited a gift book and contributed articles to magazines. Many of her novel titles flag their particular interest for women readers. Many have European (often historical) settings. Those set in London show sharp awareness of its social stratification, the gulf between fashionable and non-fashionable addresses or accessories, the careless arrogance of those at the top, the snobbish, humiliating struggle of those not quite at the top. Many dramatise the conflict between old and new money, in which the central female figure serves as object of symbolic exchange, as trophy wife. A leading silver-fork novelist, CG
kept up her attention to issues of class after the silver-fork moment ended.
By the time LEL began living alone, she was well-known in literary circles. She became a good friend of Emma Roberts
and Rosina Bulwer-Lytton
around this time, and gradually became a recognized London public figure...
Fictionalization
Lucie Duff Gordon
LDG
was an inspiration to several of her literary peers. George Meredith
probably had her in mind in drawing his character Lady Dunstane in Diana of the Crossways. (His Lady Dunstane is a close...
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Clive
At around the age of twenty, Caroline Meysey-Wigley (later CC
) developed feelings of passionate friendship for another young woman a couple of years her senior: Catherine Moody (later the novelist Catherine Gore
). The...