Jane Collier

16 January 1715 - 28 March 1755

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections	Author name Sort ascending	Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence	Jane West	Marianne defends Louisa against the charge of being a bluestocking: Though her education had extended to particulars not usually attended to by females, there was nothing in her conversation to excite the apprehensions which...
Textual Production	Elizabeth Tollet	ET had required in her will that her executors should with all convenient Speed after my decease publish and Print my Writings in Verse together with those already printed by Mr Clark at the Royal Exchange
Textual Production	Edith Somerville	They wrote and re-wrote by turns, and maintained (like Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier a century earlier in The Cry) that it was impossible to separate the woven texture of their finished writing into...
Intertextuality and Influence	Charlotte Smith	Here, under the rubric of writing only scenes of modern life and possible events and eschewing the craze for the wild, the terrible, and the supernatural, Smith, Charlotte. The Young Philosopher. Editor Kraft, Elizabeth, University Press of Kentucky. 5 CS once more questions the social structure and...
Literary responses	Sarah Scott	Samuel Richardson (given an advance copy by the publisher) reported the verdict of his wife and daughters, and the writer Jane Collier (a friend particularly of his daughter Anne ), that the book was lacking...
Friends, Associates	Samuel Richardson	His close friends, too, included a remarkable number of writing women: among others Sarah Fielding , sister of his literary arch-rival, Jane Collier , Hester Mulso (later Chapone) , Susanna Highmore (later Duncombe) , and...
Literary responses	Samuel Richardson	With Clarissa's rape and death, Richardson's circle became more critical than they had been all along, and objections from them and other readers began flowing thick and fast. The whole novel was discussed in print...
Education	Hester Lynch Piozzi	Miss Salusbury grew up not in Wales but in London and at Offley Park in Hertfordshire, the estate of her rich uncle. Her various teachers and tutors included Jane Collier 's brother Arthur ...
Intertextuality and Influence	Henrietta Rouviere Mosse	The heroine, Eliza Newton, is at the opening of the story being exploited as a sixteen-year-old unpaid governess by the affected Lady Wandsworth, who practises (in a submerged allusion to the satirist Jane Collier )...
Friends, Associates	Charlotte Lennox	She met Sarah Fielding at Richardson's house, and became friendly also with Henry Fielding , Saunders Welch (the philanthropist, who later offered her employment), and Lord Orrery . She was presumably the Mrs Lenox with...
Textual Production	Charlotte Lennox	She had written most of it by November 1751. With Johnson as mediator, she consulted Richardson about revisions, denouement, optimum length (she reduced her plan from three volumes to two), and about her choice of...
Intertextuality and Influence	Rachel Hunter	Rachel, an heiress, gives her heart to a poor man whose family oppose the match for fear of being seen as mercenary. She is also something of a social rebel, a feminist (fond of gender-bending...
Intertextuality and Influence	Elizabeth Hamilton	EH opens with a challenge to the ignorant, since only they might suppose her subject-matter here to be unfeminine. She combines two topics: Indian or Hindu society and English, allegedly Christian society, with special emphasis...
Intertextuality and Influence	Phebe Gibbes	She supplies a kind of cast list of characters, and says she has written A Dramatic Novel Gibbes, Phebe. The Niece; or, The History of Sukey Thornby. F. Noble. prelims largely in dialogue, without the interruptions of Said he and Said she. Gibbes, Phebe. The Niece; or, The History of Sukey Thornby. F. Noble. prelims (In claiming the novelty...
Reception	Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford	The answer, written by a woman for a man [and now generally agreed to be by Montagu], woundingly concludes, the Fruit that can fall without shakeing / Indeed is too mellow for me. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Essays and Poems and Simplicity, A Comedy. Editors Halsband, Robert and Isobel Grundy, Oxford University Press. 263 These...

Timeline

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 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.