Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sarah Trimmer
-
Standard Name: Trimmer, Sarah
Birth Name: Sarah Kirby
Married Name: Sarah Trimmer
ST
's writing arose out of her work for two causes, religion and education, brought most closely together in her interest in Sunday schools. She edited magazines and was a pioneer both in animal stories for children and in the reviewing of children's books. Her pedagogical concerns place her in the tradition of Barbauld
and Genlis
, but her sense of religion is narrower, and her writing more pedestrian. She was a populariser and an activist for better training for the poor. From the opening of her publishing career in the 1780s, her output was phenomenally high; its continuance after her death suggests a kind of production line or at least a family business.
The London edition, from William Lane's Minerva Press, appeared in probably late 1799 (without the author's preface). A scholarly edition by Joseph F. Bartolomeo
came out in 2009.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
A moral author who sought to do good by her writings, PW
was equally energetic in practical philanthropy. From 1791 she helped run a childbirth charity which supplied pregnant women with midwifery care and an...
Textual Features
Priscilla Wakefield
PW
welcomes the way that Adam Smith
and other Scottish Enlightenment writers have made womanhood a branch of philosophy, not a little interesting.
O’Brien, Karen. Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press.
106
Unlike Wollstonecraft
, she sees women's sphere as naturally limited and...
Textual Features
Susanna Watts
The many pictures in the volume include diagrams of the hold of a slave ship, I & Dash my Dog (a sketch), and prints of Hester Mulso Chapone
, Lady Rachel Russell
(with a copy...
Friends, Associates
Jane West
JW
developed correspondences with Sarah Trimmer
and Bishop Thomas Percy
.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jane West
JW
includes some juvenile work in this collection (a poem on Easter and another, written at her mother's request, beginning Thou sweet composer of earth-nurtur'd care, Sweet Poesy!
Feminist Companion Archive.
), and a piece reprinted from a...
Textual Features
Jane West
JW
uses heroic couplets for formal poems like To the Island of Sicily (on the retreat of the king and queen of the Two Sicilies before the French Army of Italy, commanded by Napoleon
...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Pipe Wolferstan
Here she expounds her method of teaching her grandchildren [or step-grandchildren] through play, and features acute critical comment on female writers for children. In particular, she makes detailed, intelligent criticism of Maria Edgeworth
's children's...
Friends, Associates
Mary Wollstonecraft
On her return to London MW
sought out the publisher Joseph Johnson
, of 72, St Paul's Churchyard, who became her patron, helper, and friend. He introduced her to Sarah Trimmer
, Anna Letitia Barbauld
Textual Features
Mary Wollstonecraft
These stories (told by the governess Mrs Mason to her pupils with the explicit aim of improving their characters) reflect the specific influence of Tales of the Castle by Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
. Mrs Mason...
Textual Features
Mary Wollstonecraft
Though only about twenty percent of its extracts are written by women (the same proportion as from the Bible),
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
501
this book is feminist in its emphasis on the virtue of independent judgement as...
Textual Features
Charlotte Yonge
CM's preface (dated March 1870) says that as a child she preferred the inherited books of the former generation to any moderns except Maria Edgeworth
.
Yonge, Charlotte, editor. A Storehouse of Stories. Macmillan.
Her vindication of unmarried women drawing intellectual and social authority from their relationship with the Church of England
brings to mind Mary Astell
. She appears to have learned from women writers like Sarah Trimmer
Education
Charlotte Yonge
CY
, not yet five, began reading Sarah Trimmer
's Fabulous Histories (moral tales published in 1786 about baby birds, which later became The History of the Robins).
Battiscombe, Georgina, and E. M. Delafield. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life. Constable and Company.
