Elizabeth Smith

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Standard Name: Smith, Elizabeth,, 1776 - 1806
Elizabeth Smith , a young woman of unusual intellectual gifts, aroused public interest by her early death, and by the abilities and especially the piety revealed in her posthumously published works. She was a scholar (particularly in the field of languages) rather than a writer, but her poems, letters, and reflections are worthy of interest as well as her fine translations from German and Hebrew. She was much exercised by the malign image of the learned lady, which seems to have made her uneasy about her talents and ambition, but her discussions of this issue proved empowering for many of her immediate (and publishing) successors.
Stipple engraving of Elizabeth Smith, 1776-1806, by R. M. Meadows from a drawing by John George Wood, published 1809. This head-and-shoulders, oval picture shows her wearing a simple, loose, high-waisted dress with a tall frilled collar. Her dark curly hair is pulled up and tied on top of her head. Below is printed in italic script: "This is a Drawing of the Author during her last Illness by J. G. Wood." National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Dedications Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
She dedicated it to Henrietta Maria Bowdler , less in honour of Bowdler herself than in honour of her friendship with and literary executorship of the scholar Elizabeth Smith ; she compares their relationship to...
Education Margaret Gatty
Margaret and her sister were not sent to school, but were educated chiefly by her father. One important influence on Margaret was their bachelor uncle William Ryder (who first got her started on drawing). Another...
Family and Intimate relationships Henrietta Maria Bowdler
HMB 's mother, a baronet's heiress and an intellectual, was born Elizabeth Stuart Cotton in about 1718. Four of her children grew up to be writers. She was an acquaintance of Elizabeth Montagu ,
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
under Elizabeth Stuart Bowdler
Family and Intimate relationships Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Elizabeth Mavor , biographer of Butler and Ponsonby , classes as romantic attachments HMB 's friendships with both of them, with Smith , and with Margaret Davies . Bowdler was, says Mavor, inclined to adopt...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Hamilton
While in Wales they visited Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby (the ladies of Llangollen) and in the Lakes they stayed with Elizabeth Smith and her family.
Benger, Elizabeth Ogilvy. Memoirs of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1818.
1: 152-4
Smith, Elizabeth. Fragments, In Prose and Verse. Bowdler, Henrietta MariaEditor , Richard Cruttwell, 1811.
151
In Edinburgh in 1803...
Friends, Associates Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Frances Burney preferred HMB , as more kind and gentle, to her sister Frances Bowdler. Burney amusingly records a visit by herself, HMB and others, to Lady Miller of Batheaston on 8 June 1780, when...
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Nooth
The novel combines domestic humour and social satire. The courtship of Eglantine Fortescue and the young officer Augustus Fitzroy is almost overshadowed by the broad-brush picture of their families and friends. Eglantine incurs disapproval first...
Intertextuality and Influence Susanna Watts
SW takes steps to prevent the cause of slavery entirely dominating her work, which, she announces, it will be devoted to the cause of suffering animals as well as to that of suffering men.
Watts, Susanna. The Humming Bird. I. Cockshaw.
34
Leisure and Society Hannah More
Once an omnivorous reader, HM restricted her choice of books in later life, in line with her religious convictions. She delighted in William Cowper as a poet whom I can read on Sunday.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press, 1952.
90
From...
Textual Features Clara Balfour
CB included in her collection the well-known writers Hannah More , Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna , Anna Letitia Barbauld , and Sarah Trimmer . Subjects of other sketches which also appeared separately included many of evangelical...
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
This edition was published by Colburn . EOB 's excellent scholarly introduction dwells on recent literary achievements of women. She does not explicitly identify the British ones she refers to, but they are clearly (as...
Textual Production Mary Leadbeater
One of the poems here, printed as To I. S., represents a new friendship as some consolation for the social pleasures brutally interrupted by the rebellion (The blood-stain'd earth, the warlike bands, /...
Textual Production Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB gave her name, and said on the title-page that she intended the volume as a sequel to the biography of Klopstock and his wife by the scholar Elizabeth Smith , which had been published posthumously.
Textual Production Henrietta Maria Bowdler
HMB performed another labour of love in editing her friend Elizabeth Smith 's posthumous Fragments in Prose and Verse. With Some Account of Her Life and Character by H. M. Bowdler. This remarkable volume...

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