Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Charlotte Smith
-
Standard Name: Smith, Charlotte
Birth Name: Charlotte Turner
Married Name: Charlotte Smith
CS
, poet and novelist of the later eighteenth century, continued her output especially of children's books, into the very early nineteenth century. She wrote her poems for pleasure, her remarkable, now edited letters for relief from the struggles of a difficult life, but her novels (she said) only by necessity.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
996
Many of the latter have foreign settings, not for mere exoticism but to further a political critique which takes a global view. All her writing was done at high speed: she found it hard or impossible to make her income cover the unremitting expenses of her large dependent family. A critic has recently pronounced that the best of [her] writings . . . should be recognised as among the greatest works of the period.
Barrell, John. “To Stir up the People”. London Review of Books, Vol.
The poem is dedicated by their sincere admirer, the author, to those, whose dramatic excellence suggested it.
Young, Mary Julia. Genius and Fancy; or, Dramatic Sketches. H. D. Symonds and J. Gray.
1792, prelims
MJY
did not claim it with her name until its re-issue with other poems in 1795...
Textual Features
Mary Julia Young
MJY
foregrounds her own friendship with Anna Maria Crouch, and finds room for such details as the opinions of Crouch's father, Peregrine Phillips
, about novelists: he admired Charlotte Smith
, Anna Maria Bennett
,...
Textual Features
Mary Wollstonecraft
Though only about twenty percent of its extracts are written by women (the same proportion as from the Bible),
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
501
this book is feminist in its emphasis on the virtue of independent judgement as...
Textual Production
Mary Wollstonecraft
The periodical was launched in May. MW
's first major review came in July, of Charlotte Smith
's Emmeline.
Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. Macmillan.
81
She later assumed the duties of editor; the Analytical Review became one of her...
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
284
Keen, Paul. “Review”. Eighteenth Century Fiction, Vol.
14
, No. 2, pp. 229-35.
234
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon.
47
Literary responses
Helen Maria Williams
A respectful review by Mary Wollstonecraft
in the Analytical praised Williams's calm domestic scenes,
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Editors Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler, Pickering.
7: 251
her landscapes, and her convincing characters from nature, as well as the feminine sweetness in her style and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jane West
JW
includes some juvenile work in this collection (a poem on Easter and another, written at her mother's request, beginning Thou sweet composer of earth-nurtur'd care, Sweet Poesy!
Feminist Companion Archive.
), and a piece reprinted from a...
Textual Features
Helena Wells
HW
says she has more respect for the upper classes than some of our modern reformists.
Wells, Helena. Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females. L. Peacock; W. Creech.
7
She recommends reading poetry and history, not novels: Novel reading tends to enervate the mind. We rise from...
Textual Features
Jane Warton
It seems that at least JW
's brother Joseph (whose published critique of Pope's poetry helped reshape literary opinion) was open to influence from her critical judgement; this raises at least the possibility that some...
Textual Production
Eglinton Wallace
It appeared in two different editions put out this year through the different publishers T. Hookham
, and Debrett
. The Debrett edition lists the price, one shilling and sixpence, on the title-page.
“Eighteenth Century Collections Online”. Gale Databases.
Goethe's novel...
Textual Production
Helen Waddell
An earlier translator was Charlotte Smith
, whose version appeared in probably late 1785. George Saintsbury
supplied an introduction for Waddell's translation (which was reprinted in 1934). This work led to another, a play about...
Textual Features
Sarah Trimmer
In addition to Catharine Cappe
's work on Sunday schools and versions of fairy stories by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy
, the magazine reviewed work by a whole library of didactic, pedagogical, or improving writers, reprinted as...
Friends, Associates
Mary Tighe
Before she left London, MT
met there her fellow Irish poet Tom Moore
. He subsequently visited her in Dublin and complimented her in verse. She exchanged poems with Barbarina Wilmot (later Lady Dacre)
...
Wealth and Poverty
Elizabeth Thomas
This was the low point (so far) in Thomas's life. Gwinnett had changed his will less than three weeks before his death, and left her 600 pounds, but his family ensured that it did not...
Leisure and Society
Henrietta Sykes
In her diary for 1813 recorded New Year celebrations with much conviviality: she and her guests, she wrote, danced like lunatics. She also listed good novels she had recently read. They included The School for...
Timeline
1731: Antoine-François Prévost published the first...
13 September 1759: A British party under James Wolfe climbed...
National or international item
13 September 1759
A British party under James Wolfe
climbed the Heights of Abraham at Quebec and beat the French in battle there.
1775: The first, posthumous, printing of Thomas...
Writing climate item
1775
The first, posthumous, printing of Thomas Gray
's sonnet on the death of Richard West
caused a literary sensation; it laid the foundation for Charlotte Smith
's Elegiac Sonnets, 1784, and the revival of the sonnet form.
1780: James Harrison (hitherto chiefly known as...
Writing climate item
1780
James Harrison
(hitherto chiefly known as a music publisher) began to issue the handsomely-produced Novelists' Magazine, a weekly serial reprinting of canonical novels.
April 1789: The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward's...
Women writers item
April 1789
The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward
's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.
By June 1789: William Lisle Bowles published Fourteen Sonnets,...
Writing climate item
By June 1789
William Lisle Bowles
published Fourteen Sonnets, Elegiac and Descriptive, Written during a Tour.
2 September 1793: Henrietta O'Neill, Irish writer and patron,...
Women writers item
2 September 1793
Henrietta O'Neill
, Irish writer and patron, died. She had opened a private theatre at her seat, Shane's Castle in County Antrim, and also supported the theatre in Belfast.
By June 1796: Samuel Taylor Coleridge compiled a booklet...
By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...
Women writers item
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford
published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.
December 1802: The Critical Review extolled the quality...
Women writers item
December 1802
The Critical Review extolled the quality of contemporary women's poetry: Miss Seward
, Mrs Barbauld
, Charlotte Smith
, will take their place among the English poets for centuries to come.
1804: The publisher George, George, and John Robinson,...
1825: Alexander Dyce, then a twenty-seven-year-old...
Women writers item
1825
Alexander Dyce
, then a twenty-seven-year-old reluctant clergyman, published his Specimens of British Poetesses, a project in rediscovering women's literary history.
Texts
Smith, Charlotte. A Narrative of the Loss of the Catharine, Venus, and Piedmont Transports. Sampson Low, 1796.
Smith, Charlotte. Beachy Head. Joseph Johnson, 1807.
Smith, Charlotte. Celestina. T. Cadell, 1791.
Smith, Charlotte. Conversations, Introducing Poetry. Joseph Johnson, 1804.
Smith, Charlotte. Conversations, Introducing Poetry. J. Sharpe, 1815.
Smith, Charlotte. Desmond. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1792.
Smith, Charlotte. Elegiac Sonnets. J. Dodsley, 1784.
Smith, Charlotte. Elegiac Sonnets. T. Cadell, 1789.
Smith, Charlotte. Elegiac Sonnets. T. Cadell; W. Davies, 1797.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. The Old Manor House, edited by Anne Henry Ehrenpreis, Oxford University Press, 1969, p. v - xxx.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle, edited by Anne Henry Ehrenpreis, Oxford University Press, 1971.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. Elegiac Sonnets 1789, edited by Jonathan Wordsworth, Woodstock Books, 1992.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. The Poems of Charlotte Smith, edited by Stuart Curran, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. xix - xxix.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith, edited by Judith Phillips Stanton, Indiana University Press, 2003, p. i - xlv.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. The Works of Charlotte Smith, edited by Michael Garner et al., Pickering and Chatto, 2005, p. xxix - xxxvii.
Smith, Charlotte. Letters of a Solitary Wanderer. Sampson Low, 1799.