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.
An anonymous novel was published in three volumes by Johnson
, entitled Letters of Miss Riversdale, which Charlotte Smith
ascribed to AD
.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
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Textual Features
Anne Damer
With many suitors, Louisa would like permission to stay single, but she has a project for the conversion to Christianity of Mr Stanville, whom eventually she marries. (The similarity of this name to Stainville in...
Literary responses
Ann Batten Cristall
The Critical Review discerned in the collection considerable merit and the hand of genius: so much so that it felt it safe to overlook a few blemishes (though it mentioned some for the sake...
Friends, Associates
William Cowper
Notable among Cowper's other friends were the Rev John Newton
(a former slave-trader who since his conversion had become a hellfire Evangelical preacher), Lady Austen
(who set him the writing task commemorated in the title...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Cobbold
EC
corresponded with members of the London scientific intelligentsia: Sir James Edward Smith
, first President of the Linnean Society
(who encouraged Charlotte Smith
to introduce botanical information into her novels, but proved singularly unhelpful...
Quotations heading chapters come from Milton
and other mostly modern poets, including Charlotte Smith
and Mary Robinson
. Other inset poems may be EFC
's own.
McLeod, Deborah. The Minerva Press. University of Alberta.
The story opens as Portuguese peasants encounter a fainting...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Hester Mulso Chapone
HMC
was still reading and commenting on others' works into her old age. She read and remarked on Hester Piozzi
, Charlotte Smith
, Edward Gibbon
, Erasmus Darwin
's The Loves of the Plants...
Textual Features
Ada Cambridge
It opens with the title-poem of about 650 lines, The Old Manor House, which tells the tragic story of two young lovers, Guy and Margaret, who are kept apart because of the impossible circumstances...
names
Medora Gordon Byron
At the date of the first Miss Byron novel, Elizabeth Strutt
was publishing as Mrs Byron while the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron
, had had only a single juvenile collection reviewed. While the name...
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, p. vii - viii; various pages.
