Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Germaine de Staël
-
Standard Name: Staël, Germaine de
Birth Name: Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker
Married Name: Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël
Used Form: Germaine de Stael
GS
is remembered primarily for her political activism and the salons she established following the French Revolution; history, politics, and culture were certainly among her frequent literary subjects. The same interests inform her highly successful and influential novels, some short stories and, less significantly, plays. Other writings include literary criticism and personal letters.
Winegarten, Renee. Mme de Staël. Berg.
81
Her anglophilia and her attention to English literature and culture gave her particular importance for British women writers.
The second story, The History of a Nonchalant is an early fictional treatment of religious doubt as suffered by its intellectual male protagonist, Charles. He travels to Rome, where he marries an Italian poet...
Textual Features
Harriet Martineau
Her subjects in the first essay are Hannah More
(especially her Practical Piety and An Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of Saint Paul) and Anna Letitia Barbauld
, whom she regarded as...
Textual Features
Lydia Maria Child
LMC
's first four subjects were all known for their writings and for their resistance to tyrannical authority, either political or religious, but she is more interested here in what she alleges to have been...
Textual Features
Julia Kavanagh
In her preface JK
explains her interest in the rise of the novel and argues that novels have become the teachers for good or for evil of many; their power can be exalted or deplored—it...
Textual Features
Julia Kavanagh
JK
successfully blends scholarly knowledge with popular style. Her historical and critical opinions are still well worth reading. On the great length of Scudéry
's romances, she cites a contemporary reader who had reached page...
Textual Features
Helen Craik
Authors quoted on HC
's title-page include La Rochefoucauld
. Mary Robinson
's Walsingham is quoted in volume two and supplies the epigraph for volume three.
Craciun, Adriana, and Kari E. Lokke, editors. “The New Cordays: Helen Craik and British Representations of Charlotte Corday, 1793-1800”. Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, State University of New York Press, pp. 193-32.
228n47
The story opens shortly before the French Revolution...
Textual Features
Edith Sitwell
This book depends on poking fun at its subjects, and invites its readers to join in Sitwell's superior amusement. Some of her subjects deserve better, like Margaret Fuller
, who (despite the adjective in the...
Textual Features
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
In her preface Owenson, unwisely, covered up the problems she had had with this novel by claiming to have written it in three months and never corrected it. It is mostly set in Athens (as...
Textual Features
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Morgan describes chiefly Paris and its society, ostensibly on the model of Germaine de Staël
's L'Allemagne. She does indeed include French culture centrally among her topics: she criticises the works of Corneille
and...
Reception
Marion Reid
Scholar Margaret McFadden
notes that this work was tremendously successful, particularly in the United States, where it went through five editions between 1847 and 1852. The 1847 edition and all ensuing versions were printed...
Publishing
Elizabeth Rigby
ER
continued to write biographical works, publishing in the Quarterly Review in July 1881 Madame de Staël
: A Study of her Life and Times, an essay which incorporates reviews of several new works...
Publishing
Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Elizabeth Devonshire was a prolific and expressive letter-writer. Letters of the two duchesses, Elizabeth and Georgiana, were edited in 1898 by Vere Foster
. In 1980 Elizabeth's unpublished correspondence in French with de Staël
...
Publishing
Lady Caroline Lamb
Among copies sent out by the author was one for Germaine de Staël
.
Douglass, Paul. Lady Caroline Lamb. Palgrave Macmillan.
185
A second edition followed the same year (with William Lamb
's permission),
Douglass, Paul. Lady Caroline Lamb. Palgrave Macmillan.
195
which contained LCL
's long preface, self-defensive...
Occupation
Amy Levy
AL
was an accomplished draughtswoman. She drew vivid sketches and scenes. Her topics at an early age included a feminist on a soapbox, and characters from Louisa May Alcott
's Little Women and Germaine de Staël
Occupation
William Godwin
The imprint M. J. Godwin and Company was launched the following year. The business flourished, becoming almost a literary salon like that of Joseph Johnson
: visitors included Germaine de Staël
. It remained, however...
