Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Inchbald
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Standard Name: Inchbald, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Simpson
Married Name: Elizabeth Inchbald
Pseudonym: Mrs Woodley
Nickname: Mrs Perfection
EI
was a diarist from her teens. Before and after her debut on as an actress on the London stage in 1780, she considered writing as a way to make a living. Before she had made any headway getting her first novel accepted, she became a prolific dramatist: she wrote or translated twenty-one plays (about half of them adaptations). Three major theatrical editing projects appeared under her name. In the early twenty-first century her reputation stands high both as novelist and dramatist.
The ten women here share varying degrees and varying combinations of sexual, political, or literary notoriety. Two of them—Elizabeth Inchbald
and Lady Blessington
—hold the status of professional authors. Two more—Becky Wells (whom...
Her narratives of these emotional involvements lead her into analysis of the different effects of love on the two sexes. This analysis is founded on two women writers (identifiable although she does not name them)...
Literary responses
Maria Theresa Kemble
First Faults received a condescending review in the June number of the Monthly Mirror. It was, however, enthusiastically welcomed in a poem by Martha Hale
, who encouraged MTK
to emulate playwright, actress, and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sophia King
The novel opens with a philosophical dialogue (between males) which makes reference to Voltaire
, Hume
, Rousseau
, and Godwin
's Caleb Williams. Its subtitle sounds like a pointer to autobiographical content, and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Margaretta Larpent
Criticism has an even freer rein in the later than in the earlier diaries. In 1790 AML
found Mariana Starke
's unpublished The British Orphans indelicate and Starke
's The Widow of Malabar showy but...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Vernon Lee
In her first essay, Lee offers a summary analysis of the English novelistic tradition. Judging them especially, though not entirely, on their treatments of morality, she evaluates writers including Jane Austen
, Maria Edgeworth
,...
Textual Features
Charlotte McCarthy
Here CMC
voices various complaints: of sufferings caused by the Dearness of Provisions, of the impossibility of women's earning a living, of the nation's wickedness, the decline of charity, the prevalence of atheists, and of...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Meeke
This novel has unusual interest for modern writers in that it brings into concluding harmony not only Protestant and Catholic but also Jewish characters. The noble or upper-class families with which the story opens are...
Textual Production
Alice Meynell
She often used this column to address the works of literary women of the past. She judged Jane Austen
inferior to Charlotte Brontë
, accepting Brontë's opinion that Austen lacked what she, by implication, possessed:...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Alice Meynell
Many of the essays reprinted here focus on women writers who were, to put it mildly, little known to the public in the 1940s. These included: Anna Seward
and Joanna Baillie
, as well as...
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho
, the patriotic heroism...
Friends, Associates
Amelia Opie
In London she met many artists, writers, and politically active reformists: as well as Godwin
, she met Elizabeth Inchbald
, Mary Wollstonecraft
(who impressed her deeply, and trusted her enough to confide her plans...
