Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Gunning
-
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.
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...
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...
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...
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
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...
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 et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 772
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Joukovsky, Nicholas A. “Jane Porters First Novel: The Evidence of an Unpublished Letter”. Notes and Queries, Vol.
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...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Susannah Gunning
SG
defends my glorious child . . . . my proud heart's darling,Elizabeth Gunning
, against the efforts of art or machination to besmirch as fair a fame as ever yet has graced the...
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...
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.
121ff
Wealth and Poverty
Susannah Gunning
SG
's estranged husband
died abroad, leaving her and her daughter
his entailed—but mortgaged—Irish estates.
Gantz, Ida. The Pastel Portrait. Cresset Press.
173, 175
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
Textual Production
Susannah Gunning
SG
's final work, The Heir Apparent, A Novel, was posthumously published with her daughter
's revision and additions.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 35 (1802): 477
Timeline
: The Gunning sisters arrived in London from...
Building item
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...
Women writers item
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.
Texts
Gunning, Elizabeth. Dangers through Life. J. Ebers, 1810.
Gunning, Elizabeth. Family Stories. B. Tabart, 1802.
Gunning, Elizabeth. Lord Fitzhenry. J. Bell, 1794.
Auvigny, Jean du Castre d’, and Pierre François Guyot Desfontaines. Memoirs of Madame De Barneveldt. Translator Gunning, Elizabeth, S. Low; E. Booker, 1795.
Jeanne-Isabelle-Pauline Polier de Bottens, baronne de Montolieu,. Sentimental Anecdotes. Translator Gunning, Elizabeth, C. Chapple, 1811.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Exile of Erin. B. Crosby, 1808.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Foresters. Sampson Low, 1796.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Gipsy Countess. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799.
Gunning, Susannah, and Elizabeth Gunning. The Heir Apparent. J. Ridgway and H. D. Symonds, 1802.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Man of Fashion. M. Jones, 1815.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Orphans of Snowdon. H. Lowndes, 1797.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Packet. J. Bell, 1794.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Packet. Burnside; J. Bell, 1794.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Village Library. B. Crosby, 1802.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The War-Office. Published for the author, 1803.
