Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Emily Brontë
-
Standard Name: Brontë, Emily
Birth Name: Emily Brontë
Pseudonym: Ellis Bell
Used Form: Emily Bronte
Used Form: Two
Emily Brontë
collaborated with her siblings on a body of juvenilia, and by herself wrote a small number of poems and a single surviving novel. Wuthering Heights is established as one of the most original and disturbing novels of the mid-nineteenth century. Its compelling imagery, sophisticated narrative technique, and powerful, indeed violent, story—part ghost story, part romance, part anatomy of social hierarchies and cultural conflict—details the enmity between two families on the Yorkshire moors that erupts when a strange child is adopted into one of them, and which is only resolved in the subsequent generation.
A hatchet job of a short notice in The Guardian identified this as a pseudo-scholarly appendix to Emily
's Wuthering Heights, a parody of the Brontë industry, but as finally an example of liana...
Reception
Flora Thompson
In further Ladies Companion competitions the same year, FT
went on to win joint second prize for her essay on Emily Brontë
(which, again, the magazine printed) and another first prize for her essay on...
Textual Production
Flora Thompson
In 1923 The Catholic Fireside launched FT
's column entitled the Fireside Reading Circle. As well as competitions for readers, with her critiques on their efforts, it included her own essays on literary topics...
Reception
Charlotte Maria Tucker
CMT
, whose works sold very well, was regarded as a major female author during the mid-Victorian period. She was incensed when in 1882 some one wrote a sketch of her life, and requested her...
Wisker, Alistair et al. “Introduction: A Literary Appreciation”. Doreen Wallace, 1897-1989: Writer and Social Campaigner, Edwin Mellen Press, p. xvii - xxi.
xviii
Textual Production
Mary Augusta Ward
MAW
produced a series of introductions to the Haworth edition of works by Charlotte
, Emily
, and Anne Brontë
.
Understanding the difficulties of dealing in detail with Victorian religious perplexity, MAW
herself placed the book in the tradition of religious or social propaganda
Ward, Mary Augusta. A Writer’s Recollections. Harper and Brothers.
SW
puts in puts in something like a regular work day when writing, but keeps going to all hours when re-writing. Despite her success, she still finds the process largely torture. And yet [s]tarting...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sarah Waters
As a child SW
loved writing poems and stories, all entirely derivative from her reading of popular books like the Dr Who novelizations. In the sixth form at school she began to find the study...
Textual Production
Rosamund Marriott Watson
RMW
was by this time establishing a name for herself as an poet. In 1890 Elizabeth A. Sharp
included three of her poems in Women Poets of the Victorian Era. The anthology also features...
Literary responses
Mary Webb
This exemplifies the double-edged nature of MW
's reputation. On the one hand she has become almost synonymous in the public mind with the genre she made famous: the romantic, earthy, rural novel. Her early...
Textual Features
Eudora Welty
The word regional, said Welty, is careless, condescending, and an outsider's term; it has no meaning for the insider who is doing the writing.Jane Austen
, theBrontësisters
, and the writers...
Publishing
Romer Wilson
RW
published a biography, All Alone: The Life and Private History of Emily Jane Brontë, for which she had been commissioned the previous year.
Selincourt, Ernest De. “The Brontës: Review of <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>All Alone</span> by Romer Wilson”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1376, p. 446.
446
Seymour-Smith, Martin, and Andrew C. Kimmens, editors. World Authors, 1900-1950. H. W. Wilson.
The Times Literary Supplement reviewed this novel harshly. It judged the story fairly dull and pointless, and took issue with Jill's girlish narrative tone: Miss Wilson's slangy unsophistication is not simplicity; it is merely an...
