Margaret Minifie

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Standard Name: Minifie, Margaret
Birth Name: Margaret Minifie
Pseudonym: Miss Minifie
MM was a minor eighteenth-century sentimental novelist. Her literary career was bound up with that of her sister, and the account reflected in standard reference books has rendered her nearly invisible by assimilating a number of her works to her sister's oeuvre. Bibliographer James Raven refers to the revisionist account in the Feminist Companion, 1990, which sorted out the works of the sisters.
Raven, James. “Historical Introduction: The Novel Comes of Age”. The English Novel 1770-1829, edited by Peter Garside et al., Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 14-117.
49n99

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Susannah Gunning
SG and her sister, Margaret Minifie , were close. They became novelists together, and Margaret, who never married, lived with Susannah for much of her life.
Literary responses Susannah Gunning
Modern critics have discussed the style of sentimental heroine favoured in the novels dating from the years of SG 's collaboration with her sister Margaret Minifie . Janet Todd has claimed that these female protagonists...
Textual Production Susannah Gunning
Susannah Minifie (later SG ) collaborated with her sister Margaret Minifie in a sentimental epistolary novel, The Histories of Lady Frances S— and Lady Caroline S—: three volumes appeared this year.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
16 (1763): 108
Textual Production Susannah Gunning
Susannah Minifie (later SG ) collaborated with her sister again in a didactic novel, The Picture, printed for the authors.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
21 (1766): 288
Textual Production Susannah Gunning
SG published, with her name, Delves, A Welch Tale: no copy of the first edition is now known to be extant.
The unusual name of Delves had also appeared in Margaret Minifie 's Barford...

Timeline

1771: In a year when Sir Joshua Reynolds painted,...

Women writers item

1771

In a year when Sir Joshua Reynolds painted, as Girl Reading, his niece Theophila Palmer perusing Richardson 's Clarissa, five novels by women advertised their Clarissa kinship.
Perry, Ruth. “Clarissa’s Daughters, or The History of Innocence Betrayed. How Women Writers Rewrote Richardson”. Clarissa and Her Readers: New Essays for the Clarissa Project, edited by Carol Houlihan Flynn and Edward Copeland, AMS Press, 1999, pp. 119-41.
133-5

Texts

Minifie, Margaret. Barford Abbey. T. Cadell and J. Payne, 1768, 2 vols.
Minifie, Margaret. Coombe Wood. R. Baldwin, 1783, 2 vols.
Minifie, Margaret. The Cottage. T. Durham, G. Kearsly, S. Bladon and F. Blyth, 1769, 3 vols.
Minifie, Margaret. The Count de Poland. J. Dodsley and R. Baldwin, 1780, 4 vols.
Gunning, Susannah, and Margaret Minifie. The Histories of Lady Frances S—,— and Lady Caroline S——. R. and J. Dodsley, 1763, 4 vols.
Gunning, Susannah, and Margaret Minifie. The Picture. Printed for the authors and sold by J. Johnson, 1766, 3 vols.
Minifie, Margaret. The Union. R. Dutton, 1803, 3 vols.