Elizabeth Gunning

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Standard Name: Gunning, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Gunning
Pseudonym: Miss Gunning
Nickname: Gunnilda
Nickname: Miss Charlemagne
Nickname: Miss Charly
Married Name: Elizabeth Plunkett
EG published, mostly during the later eighteenth century, a number of novels (including the one of her late mother 's which she finished), translations, a children's book, and two unacted plays. Many appeared before her marriage, and there has been some confusion with her mother's work. Both Gunnings are acutely class-conscious, centring many plots on wished-for ascent to the nobility (whose vices as a class they nevertheless strongly condemn): a motif which EG neatly reverses in her last.
Reproduction of painted portrait of Elizabeth Gunning by Francis Cotes, 1751. The backgrorund is blue blurred into black and her clothing is painted impressionistically, except for some orante gold detailing lower on her dress.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Dedications Jane Porter
Fraser's Magazine later ascribed to JP an anonymous gothic romance published this month, entitled The Spirit of the Elbe and dedicated to Elizabeth Gunning . Scholar Nicholas A. Joukovsky confirmed this ascription.
Garside, Peter, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling, editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000.
1: 772
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Joukovsky, Nicholas A. “Jane Porter’s First Novel: The Evidence of an Unpublished Letter”. Notes and Queries, pp. 15 -16.
15-17
Family and Intimate relationships Harriette Wilson
Meanwhile her next lover (whom, like the prince, she propositioned by letter) was the first man, she said, with whom she ever fell erotically in love. He represented another step up in society, being the...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Charlotte Bury
Lady Charlotte was therefore a first cousin of Elizabeth Gunning (also a novelist); she was just into her teens at the time of the scandal of Elizabeth's alleged engagement to Charlotte's eldest full brother, the...
Family and Intimate relationships Susannah Gunning
In the notorious family quarrel over the courtship of Elizabeth Gunning , SG sided with her daughter against her husband .
Gantz, Ida. The Pastel Portrait. Cresset Press, 1963.
121ff
Family and Intimate relationships Susannah Gunning
SG 's only child, Elizabeth Gunning , born in 1769 (later, by marriage, Elizabeth Plunkett), became a novelist like her mother.
Friends, Associates Mary Robinson
MR remained devoted to the idea of female friendship. She met the artist Maria Cosway in France and they became firm friends. In her last months she wrote to the novelist Elizabeth Gunning to sympathise...
Occupation Harriett Jay
HJ made her London debut the next month, on 22 December, in Buchanan's The Nine Days Queen. In this too she took on the lead role (this time as Lady Jane Grey ). Her...
Publishing Hannah Brand
It was printed at Norwich and sold through London publishers. The subscription list was impressive, including Anna Letitia Barbauld , John Brand (presumably HB 's brother) of Hemingston Hall in Suffolk, who took twenty copies...
Publishing Frances Arabella Rowden
Her book did well. Many clergy, many parents of girls in the Hans Place school, many relations of the author and of her dedicatee subscribed, plus Elizabeth Gunning , Richard Brinsley Sheridan , and Sarah Trimmer
Textual Features Susannah Gunning
This historical tale, of a Roman father, Virginius, who exerts the ultimate control over his daughter's sexual destiny by killing her, carries oblique, disturbing reference to Elizabeth Gunning 's courtship story. In the poem the...
Textual Features Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
All the mock eclogues (written, like most of Montagu's more ambitious poetry, in heroic couplets with the occasional triplet) target actual individuals and refer to events which were gossip of the day. Monday, Wednesday...
Textual Features Sarah Trimmer
In addition to Catharine Cappe 's work on Sunday schools and versions of fairy stories by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy , the magazine reviewed work by a whole library of didactic, pedagogical, or improving writers, reprinted as...
Textual Features Charlotte Yonge
The second volume is again rich in women's writing. Its first item is Elizabeth Gunning 's Family Stories; or, Evenings at my Grandmother's. CY mentions with approval another item, A Puzzle for a Curious...
Textual Production Annabella Plumptre
AP translated from German The Foresters, a play by Wilhelm Augustus Iffland , and published it with Vernor and Hood , with her name as Bell Plumptre.
This has no connection with Elizabeth Gunning
Textual Production Susannah Gunning
SG printed for the author her defence of her daughter and attack on her husband : A Letter . . . Address'd to His Grace the Duke of Argyll.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 1 (1791): 341

Timeline

Summer1751
The Gunning sisters arrived in London from Ireland, and created a sensation with their beauty: Maria was aged around seventeen and Elizabeth was a year younger.
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.