Sarah Fielding

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Standard Name: Fielding, Sarah
Birth Name: Sarah Fielding
Pseudonym: A Lady
Pseudonym: The Author of David Simple
SF , best known as a mid-eighteenth-century novelist, tried a range of other genres as well: history, criticism, a play, a translation, and a landmark children's book which is both a work of pedagogy and commonly billed as the first school story for girls. Her reputation is gradually emerging from the shadow of her brother Henry 's and enabling recognition of her status as a woman of letters, and her pivotal position in the history of the novel.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Elizabeth Barrett Browning
For a young woman who had never attended university (as she of course could not at this time) to offer a translation from a classical language was both courageous and confident.
It was a long...
Textual Production Gillian Clarke
GC published Prior Park: A Compleat Landscape, about the Palladian mansion outside Bath built by Ralph Allen , the patron of Sarah Fielding .
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production Jane Collier
The second of these criticisms was a letter in answer to Edward Cave , who had published in the Gentleman's Magazine the argument of a Swiss professor, Albrecht von Haller , that Clarissa was wrong...
Textual Production Jane Collier
The case for JC 's part-authorship with Sarah Fielding in The Cry (finished by 19 November 1753, published on 2 March 1754)
Fielding, Henry, and Sarah Fielding. The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding. Editors Battestin, Martin C. and Clive T. Probyn, Clarendon Press.
xx, 129n2
has rested chiefly on internal evidence: the work's experimental, generically undefinable...
Textual Production Jane Collier
This extraordinary book is discussed in Orlando under Sarah Fielding , though without prejudice to the belief that Collier's part in it is crucial.
Textual Production Jane Collier
This single-page allegory in JC 's commonplace-book figures her literary collaboration with Sarah Fielding as a shared project in dress-making.
Collier, Jane et al. Common Place Book.
78
Londry, Michael. “Our dear Miss Jenny Collier”. Times Literary Supplement, pp. 13-14.
13
Their method of needlework gives a pleasing new turn to the patchwork trope...
Textual Production Jane Collier
Margaret Collier suggests that JC wrote an unfinished play. In her sister's commonplace-book, she remarks on a play featuring a character who is always reading other people's thoughts (I know you think me unreasonable...
Family and Intimate relationships Jane Collier
JC was living with Sarah Fielding in Beauford Buildings, London.
Scholars differ as to whether this was early or late in the year.
Keymer, Tom. “Jane Collier, Reader of Richardson, and the Fire Scene in <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Clarissa</span&gt”;. New Essays on Samuel Richardson, edited by Albert J. Rivero, Macmillan; St Martin’s Press, pp. 141-61.
145 and n26
Sabor, Peter, and Sarah Fielding. “Introduction”. The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last, University Press of Kentucky, p. vii - xli.
xxxix
Bree, Linda. Sarah Fielding. Twayne.
xii
Keymer, Tom. “Jane Collier, Reader of Richardson, and the Fire Scene in <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Clarissa</span&gt”;. New Essays on Samuel Richardson, edited by Albert J. Rivero, Macmillan; St Martin’s Press, pp. 141-61.
145 and n26
Textual Production Jane Collier
JC wrote to Samuel Richardson to explain why he ought not to make a change he wished to in Sarah Fielding 's The Governess.
Fielding, Henry, and Sarah Fielding. The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding. Editors Battestin, Martin C. and Clive T. Probyn, Clarendon Press.
xxix-xxx
Author summary Jane Collier
JC was a remarkably innovative and experimental prose-writer of the mid-eighteenth century. She produced one anti-conduct-book, one collaborative novel (written together with Sarah Fielding ), a remarkable commonplace-book (only recently discovered), and trenchant literary-critical comments...
Friends, Associates Jane Collier
JC was a lifelong friend of Sarah Fielding and her brother Henry (who famously mentioned in a book inscription her understanding more than Female, mixed with virtues almost more than human),
Londry, Michael. “Our dear Miss Jenny Collier”. Times Literary Supplement, pp. 13-14.
14
and of...
Textual Features Jane Collier
It vividly reflects the liveliness and originality of JC 's mind, her interest in books (from the classics and the Bible to very recent publications), education, women's issues, family life, and in moral interpretation of...
Textual Features Jane Collier
The commonplace-book throws light on Collier's other extant writings as well. A casual mention of what Sally calls the Turba proves definitively that at least one neologism in The Cry stemmed not from her but...
Textual Production Mary Collyer
An anonymous novel appeared entitled The History of Betty Barnes: it has sometimes been attributed to Sarah Fielding , but is actually by MC , as literary historian Joyce Grossman has shown.
Grossman, Joyce. “Social Protest and the Mid-Century Novel: Mary Collyer’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The History of Betty Barnes</span&gt”;. Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in their Lives, Work, and Culture, edited by Linda V. Troost, Vol.
1
, pp. 165-84.
165
Grossman, Joyce. “Social Protest and the Mid-Century Novel: Mary Collyer’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The History of Betty Barnes</span&gt”;. Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in their Lives, Work, and Culture, edited by Linda V. Troost, Vol.
1
, pp. 165-84.
Literary responses Mary Collyer
Brian Alderson noted that this may be the earliest known publication of secular stories for children in English, and called it the pearl of the Ludford Box—
Immel, Andrea. “<span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>A Christmass-Box</span>. Mary Homebred and Mary Collyer: Connecting the Dots”. Children’s Books History Society Newsletter, No. 94, pp. 1-4.
1
although he had nothing but contempt...

Timeline

By February 1752: James Harris (friend of Sarah Fielding and...

Writing climate item

By February 1752

James Harris (friend of Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier ) published Hermes: or, A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar.

1774: The British Novelist: Or, Virtue and Vice...

Writing climate item

1774

The British Novelist: Or, Virtue and Vice in Miniature was published in twelve volumes of abridged texts by Sarah and Henry Fielding , Richardson , Smollett , and Lennox .

1818: The successful children's writer Elizabeth...

Women writers item

1818

The successful children's writerElizabeth Sandham published The School-Fellows, a Moral Tale, which devotes a chapter to commemoration of Princess Charlotte (who had died on 6 November 1817).

By Christmas 1869: Francis Galton, mathematician, scientist,...

Writing climate item

By Christmas 1869

Francis Galton , mathematician, scientist, and eugenicist, published Hereditary Genius: An Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences,

Texts

Fielding, Sarah. Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simple. Priinted for the author and sold by A. Millar, 1747.
Sabor, Peter, and Sarah Fielding. “Introduction”. The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last, University Press of Kentucky, 1998, p. vii - xli.
Fielding, Sarah. Remarks on Clarissa, Addressed to the Author. J. Robinson, 1749.
Fielding, Sarah. The Adventures of David Simple. A. Millar, 1744.
Fielding, Sarah. The Adventures of David Simple, Volume the Last. A. Millar, 1753.
Fielding, Henry, and Sarah Fielding. The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding. Editors Battestin, Martin C. and Clive T. Probyn, Clarendon Press, 1993.
Fielding, Sarah, and Jane Collier. The Cry. R. and J. Dodsley, 1754.
Fielding, Sarah. The Governess. A. Millar, 1749.
Fielding, Sarah, and Jill E. Grey. The Governess. Oxford University Press, 1968.
Fielding, Sarah. The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen-House. John Rivington and J. Dodsley, 1760.
Fielding, Sarah. The History of Ophelia. R. Baldwin, 1760.
Fielding, Sarah. The History of the Countess of Dellwyn. A. Millar, 1759.
Fielding, Sarah. The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia. Printed for the author and sold by A. Millar; J. Dodsley, and J. Leake, 1757.
Fielding, Sarah. The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia. Editor Johnson, Christopher Dyer, Bucknell University Press and Associated University Presses, 1994.
Fielding, Sarah. Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, With the Defence of Socrates. A. Millar, 1762.