Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson

-
SSW began publishing before the end of the eighteenth century. Books for children were her first market niche: both short fiction and instructional works. She later moved into translation and into other kinds of fiction: both full-scale novels of her own, and chapbooks or bluebooks—short, sensational fiction for the young or less-educated, of which some were original and some were condensations of novels by others, including several well-known titles. Critic Gary Kelly regards her as an exponent of Street Gothic: this is, works which marry the conventions of gothic with those of popular, proletarian texts.
  • BirthName: Sarah Carr Wilkinson
  • Married: Scadgell
    In fact her name, like everything about her, is a mystery. The source of Scudgell or Scadgell seems to have been her marriage, but on the comparatively few occasions when she used both names she did so in the opposite order from what might have been expected.
  • Pseudonym: S. W.
  • Indexed: Sarah Wilkinson
    Though she published as Sarah Wilkinson and probably also as Mrs Wilkinson, she appears on one title-page as Miss Sarah Wilkinson.
    ; S. S. Wilkinson

Milestones

14 December 1779

SSW was born, according to her own account; she seems to have been baptised Sarah Carr Wilkinson.
Potter, Franz. “Writing for the Spectre of Poverty”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 11, 11 Dec. 2003.

1788

The publisher John Marshall issued Midsummer Holydays; or, A Long Story, an anonymous short novel for the improvement and entertainment of young folk, which later allusive title-pages link with the name of SSW .
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.

January 1824

SSW reported that despite ill health and near destitution she had finished the manuscript of a three-volume novel to be entitled The Baronet's Widow.
Archives of the Royal Literary Fund, 1790-1918.

19 March 1831

SSW died in St Margaret's Workhouse, Westminster, where she had been resident for something close to a year; she was not yet fifty-two.
Potter, Franz. “Writing for the Spectre of Poverty”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 11, 11 Dec. 2003.

Biography

Background

14 December 1779

SSW was born, according to her own account; she seems to have been baptised Sarah Carr Wilkinson.
Potter, Franz. “Writing for the Spectre of Poverty”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 11, 11 Dec. 2003.