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.
Among the book's contents are poems and fiction (including dream visions and an Oriental tale. Titles like Cleora, or the Misery Attending Unsuitable Connections and Josepha, or pernicious Effects of early Indulgence foreground Hays's didactic...
Literary responses
Mary Hays
William Frend
had read the work in manuscript and been much pleased, though he took the liberty of suggesting a few revisions.
Hays, Mary. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist. Editor Brooks, Marilyn, Edwin Mellen.
244
Reviewers linked MH
with Wollstonecraft, with results more often hostile than...
Publishing
Mary Hays
MH
wrote a 22-page article on Charlotte Smith
for the 1800-1 issue of British Public Characters. She contributed a number of essays over a period of years for this annual series published by Richard Phillips
Textual Production
Mary Hays
It was MH
who finished Charlotte Smith
's History of England, published in 1806: Smith, in deteriorating health, had written to her about this project in July 1800. Hays added the third volume, taking...
Author summary
Eliza Haywood
EH
was the most prolific novelist by number of titles (even ignoring those doubtfully ascribed) between Aphra Behn
and Charlotte Smith
. She also wrote poems, plays, periodicals, conduct books, translation, and theatre history. Her...
Intertextuality and Influence
Eliza Haywood
A more recent generation of feminist scholars has succeeded in locating EH
in the developing tradition of women's fiction. Critic Mary Anne Schofield
has argued that her heroines are feisty feminists. Paula Backscheider
points out...
Reception
Elizabeth Hervey
It has been until recently a given of literary history that William Beckford
had his half-sister in his sights in his two burlesques on women's novel-writing. The title-page of the first quotes Pope
, thus...
The author's name appears respectfully as Mris [i.e. Mistress] Anna Hume. The main title-page prints Love, Chastitie, and Death one below the other and brackets them. The Triumph of Chastitie and The...
Reception
Ann Jebb
George Dyer
warmly praised AJ
in his poem On Liberty, which appeared in his Poems of 1792. Since he also praised Wollstonecraft
's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Charlotte Smith
,...
The Athenæum's review compared her skills favourably with those of Charlotte Smith
. However, it noted how far Smith's once high reputation had declined, and seemed to anticipate the same fate for Sybil's Second...
Textual Production
Sophia King
The Minerva Press
published SK
's (anonymous) second novel, Cordelia; or, A Romance of Real Life.
Her subtitle had been used as title by Charlotte Smith
for a translation from French published twelve years before.
University of Alberta Libraries On-line Catalogue. http://www.library.ualberta.ca/.
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Loudon
The same year, 1840, JL
issued another book for children: The Young Naturalist's Journey: or the Travels of Agnes Merton with her Mama, a hybrid of entertainment and pedagogy in the style of Charlotte Smith
Literary responses
Elizabeth Meeke
The Literary Journal began its notice with several paragraphs of comment on the status of the novel in general. It found Lafontaine's novel good in parts, but uneven, and Meeke's translation good in general, but...