William Beckford

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Standard Name: Beckford, William
Used Form: Jacquetta Agneta Mariana Jenks

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Literary responses Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
William Beckford , who had already demonstrated his hostility to women writers, annotated his copy of this work (which is now in the Beinecke Library at Yale University ). He uses Benger as an example...
Leisure and Society Lady Eleanor Butler
They treated the house like a smaller version of an ancestral family estate. They added various improvements, like the library at the back, which had windows in pointed gothic arches, paintings and miniatures on the...
Reception Cassandra, Lady Hawke
CLH 's immediate family were warm in their admiration. Frances Burney , who read Julia de Gramont when it was passed to her by the queen, found it all of a piece—all love, love, love...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth, Margravine of Anspach
She was an ornament of high society and sought out literary friends. She was, for instance, a long-term friend and correspondent of Horace Walpole , who published her writings on his private press at Strawberry Hill
Residence Ruth Fainlight
The house, reached by a steep cart-track with hairpin bends, stood in an olive grove with a grapevine over the door. RF went back to England the following autumn, and was still there when Sillitoe...
Friends, Associates Catherine Gore
CG was acquainted with a number of important literary figures. Before leaving London for the Continent she attended an assembly given by Rosina Bulwer-Lytton to which Disraeli , Lady Morgan , and Letitia Landon also...
Textual Features Catherine Gore
She quotes Byron on the title-page.
Gore, Catherine. Cecil; or, The Adventures of a Coxcomb. R. Bentley.
title-page
As the Edinburgh Review noticed, Cecil's launching as a coxcomb takes place in 1809, the year that Byron began writing Childe Harold, and his final moral awakening...
Author summary Elizabeth Hervey
Elizabeth Hervey was the author of six novels published between 1788 and 1814, besides one more, extant in a carefully-bound manuscript, which never reached print. They have something in them of sentiment and something of...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Hervey
EH 's half-brother, the brilliant but unstable writer and gothicist William Beckford the younger, was about twelve years her junior. In his teens in Switzerland (whose wild mountain landscapes made a deep impression on him)...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Hervey
By autumn 1789 (only a couple of years after he had entertained her at his beloved, self-designed home) EH 's half-brother, William Beckford , developed suspicions about her loyalty to him. By the following year...
Literary responses Elizabeth Hervey
The Critical Reviewread this pleasing and interesting story as an imitation of Burney 's Cecilia.If there is a fault, it suggested, it was the structural fault of raising and solving one difficulty...
Literary responses Elizabeth Hervey
It has been until recently a given of literary history that William Beckford had his half-sister in his sights in his two burlesques on women's novel-writing. The title-page of the first quotes Pope , thus...
Reception Elizabeth Hervey
The History of Ned Evans appeared after William Beckford 's Modern Novel Writing but before his next burlesque novel, Azemia. It does not, however, look like a specific target of Azemia, a satirical...
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Caroline Lamb
Shortly after this caper, she entered Byron's rooms, from which he was absent, and wrote in his copy of William Beckford 's Vathek, Remember me!
Douglass, Paul. Lady Caroline Lamb. Palgrave Macmillan.
144
This message quickly became the title of a...
Literary responses Lady Caroline Lamb
William Lamb worried intensely about the probable reception of Ada Reis, particularly the scenes in hell, and he tried to enlist William Gifford of the Quarterly as an ally in pressuring Caroline to tone...

Timeline

1755: Wealthy West Indian proprietor William Beckford...

Writing climate item

1755

Wealthy West Indian proprietor William Beckford (father of the author of the same name) launched The Monitor, the first newspaper to appeal explicitly to London freeholders, that is the well-to-do urban middle class.

7 June 1786: During the absence abroad of William Beckford,...

Writing climate item

7 June 1786

During the absence abroad of William Beckford , his tutor Samuel Henley anonymously published his own English translation of Vathek, an Orientalgothictale which Beckford had originally written in French.

After 31 March 1796: William Beckford burlesqued women writers...

Women writers item

After 31 March 1796

William Beckford burlesqued women writers and attacked reactionary government in his novelModern Novel Writing, or the Elegant Enthusiast; and Interesting Emotions of Arabella Bloomville. A Rhapsodical Romance; Interspersed with Poetry, published as Lady Harriet Marlow.

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

Beckford, William. Azemia. Sampson Low, 1797.
Beckford, William. Azemia. Sampson Low, 1798.
Beckford, William. “Introduction”. Modern Novel Writing (1796) and Azemia (1797), edited by Herman Mittle Levy, Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1970.
Beckford, William. Life at Fonthill, 1807-1822, with Interludes in Paris and London. Editor Alexander, Boyd, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957.
Beckford, William. Modern Novel Writing. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797.
Beckford, William. The Journal of William Beckford in Portugal and Spain, 1787-1788. Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954.
Beckford, William, and Sarah Murray. “[notes]”. A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties in the Western Highlands of Scotland, and in the Hebrides, Printed for the Author, 1803.