Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane Collier
-
Standard Name: Collier, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Collier
Nickname: Jenny
Pseudonym: C. J.
Pseudonym: The Invisible Girl
JC
was a remarkably innovative and experimental prose-writer of the mid-eighteenth century. She produced one anti-conduct-book, one collaborative novel (written together with Sarah Fielding
), a remarkable commonplace-book (only recently discovered), and trenchant literary-critical comments. Other work may have failed to survive: she reached the planning stage, at least, with a tragedy, comedy, farce, her own periodical, a French grammar, and especially periodical essays.
Number 128, 12 June 1755, follows Jane Collier
's fairly recent Art of Tormenting in discussing mental cruelty in marriage; it advises husbands to use some caution, since a wife can die of a broken...
Intertextuality and Influence
Frances Burney
FB
's dedication includes a discussion of the art of writing novels. Her final heroine, Juliet, faces even greater problems than her predecessors in negotiating the passage into the haven of marriage. At the outset...
Intertextuality and Influence
Maria Edgeworth
It opens with a breezy, antifeminist, adversarial Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend. The gentleman is hostile to female education and female authorship; his letter is based on one actually sent by Day
Textual Features
George Eliot
The sketches, which purported to have been found in a trunk of old manuscripts, are humorous. One of them, Hints on Snubbing, falls squarely into the tradition of Jane Collier
's An Essay on...
Textual Features
George Eliot
Theophrastus is a solitary and debilitatingly self-critical character, and most of the inset sketches are dark in tone. In the fable entitled The Wasp Credited with the Honeycomb, the authorship of honey is variously...
Textual Features
Fanny Fern
The topics covered by the Portfolio are wide-ranging, often based on incidents from Fern's life. Dark Days, for instance, begins with a husband asking his wife: Dying! How can you ever struggle through the...
Textual Features
Sarah Fielding
It seems, from a remark by Margaret Collier
in the commonplace-book, that after Jane Collier
's death SF
worked at finishing a draft play that Jane had left, entitled The Flatterer. It is apparently not extant.
Collier, Jane et al. Common Place Book.
40
Textual Production
Sarah Fielding
In her commonplace-book Collier
(who also mentions several dramatic schemes of her own) describes Sallys Scheme for a Farce call'd / The Lady's Register or Daily Task. This was to open with a morning...
Residence
Sarah Fielding
SF
lived with Jane Collier
in Beauford Buildings, Westminster.
Scholars differ as to whether they settled together early or late in the year.
Keymer, Tom. “Jane Collier, Reader of Richardson, and the Fire Scene in <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Clarissa</span>”;. New Essays on Samuel Richardson, edited by Albert J. Rivero, Macmillan; St Martin’s Press, pp. 141-61.
145 and n26
Sabor, Peter, and Sarah Fielding. “Introduction”. The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last, University Press of Kentucky, p. vii - xli.
xxxix
Bree, Linda. Sarah Fielding. Twayne.
xii
Sabor, Peter, and Sarah Fielding. “Introduction”. The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last, University Press of Kentucky, p. vii - xli.
xxxix
Bree, Linda. Sarah Fielding. Twayne.
xii
Textual Production
Sarah Fielding
SF
published The Adventures of David Simple, Volume the Last, a sequel to her first and most popular novel, with a preface which is probably by Jane Collier
.
Sabor, Peter, and Sarah Fielding. “Introduction”. The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last, University Press of Kentucky, p. vii - xli.
xxxix
Textual Production
Sarah Fielding
The Cry, an extraordinary experimental novel written in collaboration between SF
and Jane Collier
, was completed.
Literary historians have differed in attributing The Cry, some to both authors and some to Fielding...
Textual Production
Sarah Fielding
The Cry: A New Dramatic Fable, a remarkable novelistic collaboration between SF
and Jane Collier
, was published.
Battestin, Martin C., and Clive T. Probyn, editors. “General Introduction”. The Correspondence of Henry and Sarah Fielding, Clarendon Press, p. xv - xliii.
xxn9
Education
Sarah Fielding
While at SalisburySF
attended Mrs Rookes's boarding school there, and was later tutored in Latin and Greek by Arthur Collier
. Her lifelong friendships with Arthur's sister Jane
and with James Harris
(with both...
Friends, Associates
Sarah Fielding
SF
's important friendship with Samuel Richardson
probably dates from about 1744. In 1750 he included her and Jane Collier
in a list of thirty-six superior women, most of them his friends. Through Richardson she...
Textual Production
Sarah Fielding
She dedicated it to the court lady Anna Maria Poyntz
. It may perhaps be the Book Upon Education
Sabor, Peter, and Sarah Fielding. “Introduction”. The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last, University Press of Kentucky, p. vii - xli.
xxxix
which SF
was planning in October 1748, or that may have been something different that...
Timeline
By February 1752: James Harris (friend of Sarah Fielding and...
Writing climate item
By February 1752
James Harris
(friend of Sarah Fielding
and Jane Collier
) published Hermes: or, A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar.
January 1781-December 1782: The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties...
Writing climate item
January 1781-December 1782
The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison
in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...
Texts
Collier, Jane. An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting. A. Millar, 1753.
Collier, Jane. An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting. Editor Bilger, Audrey, Broadview, 2003.
Collier, Jane et al. Common Place Book. 1755.
Bilger, Audrey, and Jane Collier. “Introduction and Chronology”. An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting, Broadview, 2003, pp. 9-35.
Fielding, Sarah, and Jane Collier. The Cry. R. and J. Dodsley, 1754.
