Richard Brinsley Sheridan

In Recollections of a Scottish Novelist, LW records her early love of literature. The books she read as a child, especially at the age of seven—including Charlotte Yonge 's The Little Duke, works...

The title, flagging a gender-role reversal from George Farquhar 's Beaux' Stratagem, 1707, suggests a return to the wit and worldliness of Restoration comedy. The sub-plot in which Sir George Touchwood tries to keep...

Baillie's preface explicitly denies that she was influenced by (even that she had read) German tragedians, while implicitly calling attention to the similarities in style and subject-matter between her work and theirs: for instance between...

The subtitle of this novel (which in earlier centuries had been the title of a bawdy song) here alludes to a proverb about the impossible perfections of maids' husbands and bachelors' children. This first novel...

The Duchess of Devonshire knew virtually everyone in London society. Set apart was the Devonshire House Circle: a clique of wealthy and fashionable Whigs with rakish or bohemian leanings, who even spoke in their...

Mary Russell Mitford was another who knew FK well even apart from their connection through the theatre. Other friends from this period or soon afterwards included the future poet and novelist Caroline Norton

In 1813 she again met de Staël (who was visiting London) and introduced her to Elizabeth Inchbald . Others she met after her husband's death included Richard Brinsley Sheridan , Byron , and Sir Walter Scott

FB 's friendship with Woffington led to her meeting Peg's sister Polly , who became her lifelong friend. Eight years older than Brooke, Polly Woffington was a close friend of Samuel Johnson , Sir Joshua Reynolds

Among their many visitors (apart from the local gentry, with whom they duly established links), close friends included Anna Seward , Henrietta Maria Bowdler (who wrote mock-flirtatiously of LEB as her veillard [sic] or old...

Robinson found good friends among the male cultural and social leaders with whom she remained free to mix. Her daughter particularly mentions, as well as Sheridan , Sir Joshua Reynolds , Edmund Burke , and...

Here she began to gather the circle of friends which by the end of her long life had touched every cranny of English society. She had already met Edmund Burke in Bristol the previous September...

While working for the Featherstones, Sydney Owenson met Thomas Moore at a party given above his parents' grocery shop in Aungier Street, Dublin. She gained access to Ireland's bluestocking circle through Alicia or Alice Lefanu

When Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, died, Lady Elizabeth was left in a quandary as to what her own status would be at Devonshire House for the future: whether she would have to find a new...

Lady Anne lived much of her life in fashionable society, and her acquaintance was very wide. In Edinburgh in her early twenties she impressed and delighted Samuel Johnson with an impromptu and complimentary bon mot...

ALM evidently possessed the kind of personality or manner that moved others to caricature her. She is mentioned in the dedication of Richard Brinsley Sheridan 's The School for Scandal, and it has been...