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, 1985.
81
Her anglophilia and her attention to English literature and culture gave her particular importance for British women writers.
Chorley
also wrote the note on FH
in The Authors of England: A Series of Medallion Portraits, 1838, claiming for her a place of honour
Chorley, Henry Fothergill, and Achille Collas. The Authors of England. Charles Tilt, 1838.
1
among those treated there, strongly praising The Forest...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Hervey
All this provides background for a story about EH
's behaviour later the same year. John Polidori
related that on Byron
's first visit to Mme de Staël
's chateau at Coppet in Switzerland...
Material Conditions of Writing
Isabel Hill
Her need for money having induced IH
to accept Richard Bentley
's offer to translate Germaine de Staël
's Corinne into English for his series Bentley's Standard Novels, her version appeared in print.
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
Hill, Benson Earle. “Memoir of the Late Isabel Hill”. The Monthly Magazine, Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, Feb. 1842.
185-6
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Occupation
Catherine Hutton
As well as collecting illustrations of costume, CH
was an early collector of autographs. (She began both these collections at a young age, but presumably had to start again from scratch after her losses in...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Inchbald
EI
first met both Maria Edgeworth
(with whom her friendship had begun two years earlier, when Edgeworth wrote to her in praise of A Simple Story) and Germaine de Staël
.
Manvell, Roger. Elizabeth Inchbald: England’s Principal Woman Dramatist and Independent Woman of Letters in 18th Century London. University Press of America, 1987.
159-61
Intertextuality and Influence
Frances Jacson
The title-page quotes Pope
and Staël
. The novel's opening sounds like a tale of mysterious origins, but without the mystery. A quotation from Shakespeare
's Tempest—Prospero telling Miranda the story of her past—introduces...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anna Brownell Jameson
This work, which somewhat uncomfortably mixes romance with travel narrative and cultural guide, was influenced by de Staël
's Corinne. Initially put out by a printer named Thomas at his own expense, it was...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anna Brownell Jameson
The book is also a model of female erudition, peppered with foreign phrases, references to earlier Shakespeare critics, to the visual arts, and to other authors, including the ancient Greek dramatists and the German romanticists...
Intertextuality and Influence
Maria Jane Jewsbury
The book's first and longest piece, The History of an Enthusiast, is strongly influenced by Germaine de Staël
's novel Corinne; ou, L'Italie.
Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. “The Hidden Rill: The Life and Career of Maria Jane Jewsbury, II”. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Vol.
67
, No. 1, The Library, 1 Sept.–30 Nov. 1984, pp. 450-73.
451
Protagonist Julia Osborne is an orphan being brought up...
Textual Features
Maria Jane Jewsbury
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
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Ann Kelty
The book bears in various details the influence of Jane Austen
, though its overall project of pious didacticism is at odds with Austen's approach. The title-page quotes Rousseau
on the topic of the sensitive...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Ann Kelty
This novel, written in the first person throughout, purports to be the work of Alice Rivers herself, and could easily be read as fictionalised autobiography, though facts outside its story make it clear that Alice...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Ann Kelty
She goes on to quote Johnson
, Cowper
, Emerson
(with whose thought she engages in some detail), and many other canonical names. Among women she quotes from Mary Bosanquet Fletcher
(a passage about communion...
