Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Samuel Richardson
-
Standard Name: Richardson, Samuel
SR
's three epistolary novels, published between 1740 and 1753, exerted an influence on women's writing which was probably stronger than that of any other novelist, male or female, of the century. He also facilitated women's literary careers in his capacity as member of the publishing trade, and published a letter-writing manual and a advice-book for printers' apprentices.
It seems that he forced her to revoke the deed, by threats of personal violence. (She was heavily pregnant at the time, and may at first have been willing to seclusion in order to conceal...
Travel
Jane Collier
She mentions her habit of walking back and forth between London and North End (now part of Fulham), where Richardson
had his suburban home.
Collier, Jane et al. Common Place Book.
8-9
Travel
Angela Thirkell
As well as her happy Sundays at her Burne-Jones grandparents' home, The Grange, North End Lane, Fulham (once Samuel Richardson
's house), the young Angela Mackail spent many holidays staying with them at the small...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Angela Thirkell
The first house is that of her Burne-Jonesgrandparents
: The Grange, North End Lane, Fulham.
Thirkell, Angela. Three Houses. Robin Clark.
11-14
This house once belonged to the novelist Samuel Richardson
, and AT
opens the book on Susannah Highmore
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Marjorie Bowen
MB
credits British women novelists for modifying the methods of the great European novelists, noting in particular Dorothy Richardson
's perfection of the stream-of-consciousness technique. She draws a contrast between Dorothy Richardson
's Miriam and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Judith Cowper Madan
Her courtship letters, says Rumbold, are insecure, unhappy, and demanding.
Rumbold, Valerie. “The Poetic Career of Judith Cowper: An Exemplary Failure?”. Pope, Swift, and Women Writers, edited by Donald C. Mell, University of Delaware Press, pp. 48-66.
62
She later sometimes discussed books with her husband: she admired Richardson
's Pamela for its power over the emotions and also its power to...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jean Marishall
The first seventeen letters, addressed to a fourteen-year-old ex-pupil, are moralising or even nagging; Marishall hopes their publication will promote the happiness of mankind.
Marishall, Jean. A Series of Letters. C. Elliot.
1: prelims
Later she discusses the predicament of women, and although...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Jenkins
This little book (with no notes or index) opens on an echo of Jenkins's fuller work on Austen, with a tribute to the mid eighteenth century as a time of brilliant flowering in the English...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Teft
She praises Pope
, reproves Richardson
for his second part of Pamela (Mr B., she says, is no reward for Pamela's virtue), and notes that women's tea-table conversation includes acute comment on authors. She offers...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Seward
AS
's correspondence often deals with literary matters as well as with social matters and personalities. She writes with astonishing freedom to Hester Piozzi
about the latter's travel book Observations and Reflections: not only...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Williams
Williams voices admiration for each of Richardson
's three novels, and ingeniously defends him against a recurrent criticism: Proceed to teach, thy labours ne'er can tire, / Thou still must write, and we must still...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Hester Mulso Chapone
When Richardson offered her a list of examples of filial disobedience, she replied that no doubt an equally heinous list could be produced of parental oppression. With Carter
she mulled over religious and literary questions...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sheila Kaye-Smith
Here she relates significant moments in her life to what she was reading at the time. She says that her reading, directed at first by chance and the choices of others, later moved towards what...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anne Grant
Her range of literary reference and comment is wide: as well as Richardson
(whose Clarissa she unequivocally praises),
Grant, Anne. Letters from the Mountains. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme.
EM
seems to have influenced this work as a whole, in persuading Lyttelton
to reshape it into dialogue from the epistolary form (letters from the dead to the living).
Blunt, Reginald, and Elizabeth Montagu. Mrs Montagu, "Queen of the Blues", Her Letters and Friendships from 1762 to 1800. Constable.
2: 179
In the dialogues she...
Timeline
1714: Following the death of Mary Kettilby, her...
Building item
1714
Following the death of Mary Kettilby
, her executrix published her A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery; for the use of all good wives, tender mothers, and careful nurses.
19 June 1725: Dorothy Stanley, née Milborne, published...
Women writers item
19 June 1725
Dorothy Stanley
, née Milborne, published by subscription Sir Philip Sidney
's Arcadia Moderniz'd, in four books (coinciding with the thirteenth edition of the original romance).
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
November 1739: Sir Roger L'Estrange's prose translation...
Writing climate item
November 1739
Sir Roger L'Estrange
's prose translation of Aesop
's Fables (formerly treated in snappy couplets by Aphra Behn
) was printed—by Samuel Richardson
.
4 April 1741: Henry Fielding, publishing as Conny Keyber,...
Writing climate item
4 April 1741
Henry Fielding
, publishing as Conny Keyber, led the rush of response to Richardson
's Pamela with a burlesque entitled Shamela.
Probably 10 July 1748: Dorothea, Lady Bradshaigh, wrote her first...
February 1755: Samuel Richardson read the alternative ending...
Writing climate item
February 1755
Samuel Richardson
read the alternative ending to his novelClarissa that Lady Echlin
(sister of Lady Bradshaigh
) had been spurred to write by her revulsion at Clarissa's rape and unmerited death.
12 May 1759: Edward Young published Conjectures on Original...
Writing climate item
12 May 1759
Edward Young
published Conjectures on Original Composition. In a letter to the author of Sir Charles Grandison; a second volume followed the next month.
1767: At auctions of copyright, Richardson's Clarissa...
Writing climate item
1767
At auctions of copyright, Richardson
's Clarissa was valued at £600, but Addison
and Steele
's Spectator at £1,300, Shakespeare
at £1,800, and Pope
at £4,400.
1771: In a year when Sir Joshua Reynolds painted,...
Women writers item
1771
In a year when Sir Joshua Reynolds
painted, as Girl Reading, his niece Theophila Palmer
perusing Richardson
's Clarissa, five novels by women advertised their Clarissa kinship.
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
.
1780: James Harrison (hitherto chiefly known as...
Writing climate item
1780
James Harrison
(hitherto chiefly known as a music publisher) began to issue the handsomely-produced Novelists' Magazine, a weekly serial reprinting of canonical novels.
August-21 December 1791: In Paris the Salon of 1791, the first non-monarchical...
Building item
August-21 December 1791
In Paris the Salon of 1791, the first non-monarchical display of art to a new public, featured a large increase in works by women.
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.
August 1813: The Critical Review published its first welcome...
Writing climate item
August 1813
The Critical Review published its first welcome to Eaton Stannard Barrett
's famous parody of sentimental novels, The Heroine, or Adventures of the Fair Romance Reader.
1990: Robin Holloway's opera Clarissa (composed...
Building item
1990
Robin Holloway
's operaClarissa (composed in 1976 from Samuel Richardson
's novel of the same title, published in 1747-8) had its premiere.
Texts
Harris, Jocelyn, and Samuel Richardson. “Chronology”. Sir Charles Grandison, The World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 1986, p. xliii - xlv.
Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa. S. Richardson, 1748.
Richardson, Samuel. Correspondence with Lady Bradshaigh and Lady Echlin. Editor Sabor, Peter, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Richardson, Samuel. “Introduction”. Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson, edited by John Carroll, Clarendon, 1964, pp. 3-35.
Richardson, Samuel. “Introduction”. Correspondence with Aaron Hill and the Hill Family, edited by Christine Gerrard, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. i - xlix.
Richardson, Samuel. “Notes”. Clarissa, edited by Angus Ross, Penguin, 1985, pp. 1513-26.
Richardson, Samuel. Pamela. C. Rivington and J. Osborn, 1740.
