Sarah Trimmer

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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.
Painting of Sarah Trimmer by Henry Howard, exhibited 1798. She sits at a table bearing books (including a bible), inkwell and spare quill pens, holding one pen and some sheets of paper (as well as her spectacles). Her grey hair is mostly covered by a white mob cap with grey ribbon round it; she wears a checked dress and a black shawl with white neckerchief and black neckband. She is smiling slightly. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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.
31
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.
1: v
She mentions two imitations (by Mary Martha Sherwood
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Yonge
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
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...
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 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 ...
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...
Occupation Priscilla Wakefield
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 Production Susanna Haswell Rowson
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.
1: 799
Broadview Press. http://www.broadviewpress.com/.
SHR 's preface to the...
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

Timeline

August 1715: Isaac Watts published Divine Songs Attempted...

Writing climate item

August 1715

Isaac Watts published DivineSongs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children.

About 1765: Catharine Cappeimg: move in unlikely event...

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About 1765

Catharine Cappe opened one of the earliest recorded Sunday schools, at Catterick in Yorkshire.

1769: Hannah Ballimg: move in unlikely event of...

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1769

Hannah Ball opened an early Methodist Sunday school at High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire.

2 August 1788: The painter Thomas Gainsborough died at the...

Building item

2 August 1788

The painter Thomas Gainsborough died at the age of sixty-two; he was buried beside his friend Joshua Kirby (father of Sarah Trimmer ) in Kew churchyard.

6 November 1798: One John Way wrote an account of a poor widow...

Building item

6 November 1798

One John Way wrote an account of a poor widow in Hasketon near Ipswich in Suffolk and her—successful—struggle to maintain her family.

15 July 1819: Byron began to publish in instalments (opening...

Writing climate item

15 July 1819

Byron began to publish in instalments (opening with cantos one and two) his satiricalmock-epicpoemDon Juan; he left it unfinished at his death.

5 February 1836: The children's writer Dorothy Kilner died...

Women writers item

5 February 1836

The children's writerDorothy Kilner died at Stratford near London; she and her sister-in-law, Mary Ann Kilner (1753-1831), published their anonymous, undated works through John Marshall from the 1770s.

Texts

Trimmer, Sarah. A Comment on Dr Watts’s Divine Songs for Children. J. Buckland, 1789.
Trimmer, Sarah. A Companion to the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. T. Longman, 1791.
Trimmer, Sarah. A Comparative View of the New Plan of Education promulgated by Mr. Joseph Lancaster. F. C. and J. Rivington, and J. Hatchard, 1805.
Trimmer, Sarah. A Description of a Set of Prints of Roman History. J. Marshall, 1789.
Trimmer, Sarah. A Help to the Unlearned in the Study of the Holy Scriptures. F. C. and J. Rivington and J. Hatchard, 1805.
Trimmer, Sarah. A Plan for Promoting the Religious Observance of the Sabbath-Day. 1790.
Trimmer, Sarah. A Series of Prints of Roman History. J. Marshall, 1789.
Trimmer, Sarah. An Abridgement of the New Testament. F. And C. Rivington, 1797.
Trimmer, Sarah. An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature. Printed for the author, 1780.
Trimmer, Sarah. An Essay on Christian Education. F. and J. Rivington, 1818.
Trimmer, Sarah. Fabulous Histories. T. Longman, and G. G. J. and J. Robinson, and J. Johnson, 1786.
Trimmer, Sarah. Reflections upon the Education of Children in Charity Schools. T. Longman and J. and F. Rivington, 1792.
Trimmer, Sarah. Reflections upon the Education of Children in Charity Schools. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Trimmer, Sarah. Sacred History. J. Dodsley, T. Longman and G. Robinson, and J. Johnson, 1785.
Avery, Gillian et al. “Selected Bibliography: Sarah Trimmer”. Fabulous Histories; and, The Dairyman’s Daughter, edited by Justin G. Schiller et al., Garland Publishing, 1977, p. xiv - xvi.
Trimmer, Sarah. Sermons for Family Reading. J. Hatchard, and F. C. and J. Rivington, 1811.
Trimmer, Sarah. Some Account of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Trimmer. F.C and J. Rivington and J. Johnson, and J. Hatchard, 1814.
Trimmer, Sarah. The Family Magazine. J. Marshall.
Trimmer, Sarah. The Guardian of Education. J. Hatchard.
Trimmer, Sarah. The Servant’s Friend. T. Longman, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, and J. Johnson , 1786.
Trimmer, Sarah. The Sunday-School Catechist. T. Longman, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, and J. Johnson, 1788.
Trimmer, Sarah. The Two Farmers. T. Longman, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, and J. Johnson , 1786.
Trimmer, Sarah. The Œconomy of Charity. T. Longman, 1787.