Frances Brooke
-
FB
wrote in many genres during the latter half of the eighteenth century: drama and translation as well as an innovative feminist periodical. Best known are her three novels including the first realistic novel in English to be set in a colonial society of North America.
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Milestones
24 January 1724
Frances Moore (later FB
) was born shortly before this, the date of her christening at Claypole in Lincolnshire.
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
1
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
By March 1756
FB
's Virginia a Tragedy, with Odes, Pastorals, and Translations appeared in print. David Garrick
and John Rich
had rejected this tragedy for the stage.
The play had been in competition with one of the same title by Samuel Crisp
, which opened at Drury Lane
on 25 February 1754 with Garrick and Susannah Cibber
in its leading roles and with FB
's friend Mary Ann Graham, later Yates
(billed as a Gentlewoman), making a successful debut.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
4: 411
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
24 (1754): 146
Griffiths, Ralph, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
10 (1754): 225-31
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
1 (1756): 276
Garrick, David. Letters. Editors Little, David M. and George M. Kahrl, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
461
10 September 1768
Dodsley
paid FB
thirty pounds for her second novel, Emily Montague.
Catto, Susan J. Modest Ambition: The Influence of Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and the Ideal of Female Diffidence on Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Frances Brooke. University of Oxford.
242
By April 1769
FB
published her second epistolary novel, The History of Emily Montague, which until recently has been known as the first North American novel from its setting in the recently acquired British province of Lower Canada.
A contender for the title of first North American novel (or romance) is a book published by March 1767 at London, The Female American; or, The Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield. The author of this work is still (in 2017) unidentified, though it seems as likely to have been a fiction-writer as an actual Unca Eliza Winkfield
. While North American scenes were already common in fiction by British writers, they had not before been integral to the story.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
27 (1769): 300
29 August 1770
FB
wrote a self-critical letter to Dodsley
about the reasons for Emily Montague's comparative failure.
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
113, 230n4
23 January 1789
FB
died at Sleaford in Lincolnshire, two days after her husband had died in Norfolk.
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
211
Brooke, Frances. “Introduction”. The Excursion, edited by Paula R. Backscheider and Hope D. Cotton, University Press of Kentucky, p. ix - xlix.
xlix
Biography
Birth
24 January 1724
Frances Moore (later FB
) was born shortly before this, the date of her christening at Claypole in Lincolnshire.
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
1
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.