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.
The book's admirers included (perhaps embarrassingly) the courtesan Teresia Constantia Phillips
, who praised it in her Memoirs.
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, 1998.
72
Jane Collier
in her commonplace-book not only noted that Mrs Teachum has the Swift
ian...
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...
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, 1993.
263
These...
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 ClarissaNew Essays on Samuel Richardson, edited by Albert J. Rivero, Macmillan; St Martins Press, 1996, 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, 1998, p. vii - xli.
xxxix
Bree, Linda. Sarah Fielding. Twayne, 1996.
xii
Sabor, Peter, and Sarah Fielding. “Introduction”. The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last, University Press of Kentucky, 1998, p. vii - xli.
xxxix
Bree, Linda. Sarah Fielding. Twayne, 1996.
xii
Textual Features
Sarah Fielding
Its topic was the relationship between Mary Tudor
and her sister Elizabeth
before either of them came to the throne. Jane Collier
's commonplace-book mentions a scene in Sallys Play, in which a character...
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. 1748–1755.
40
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 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, 1998, 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, 1993, p. xv - xliii.
xxn9
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, 1998, p. vii - xli.
xxxix
which SF
was planning in October 1748, or that may have been something different that...
Textual Production
Sarah Fielding
Collier
's commonplace-book mentions a scheme for A Book calld the Laugh on the same plan as the Cry, but this is not known ever to have existed.
Collier, Jane et al. Common Place Book. 1748–1755.
139
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...
