Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Lady Champion de Crespigny
-
Standard Name: Champion de Crespigny, Mary,,, Lady
Birth Name: Mary Clarke
Married Name: Mary Champion de Crespigny
Pseudonym: MCC
Self-constructed Name: Mary Champion Crespigny
Titled: Lady Mary Champion de Crespigny
MLCC
used her exalted social position as a patron of writers, especially women writers. She was a habitual diarist (though little of her diary survives) and a writer of occasional poetry—for manuscript circulation, or inscription on landscape features, and at least once for print. She chose print for two longer works: a novel and a conduct-book, 1803, made up of letters addressed to her teenage son in about 1780.
"Mary, Lady Champion de Crespigny, The Pavilion, 1796, vol 1 title-page." Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vqVg43HQpJ556CwUkNCOA0DKIavC5mD8/view.
MS
made some use of a play by Antoine Marin Le Mierre
, La veuve du Malabar. In her version the censor compelled some changes, like watering down the word hell-born (used of suttee)...
Dedications
Anna Maria Porter
AMP
published, with her name, her second novel, Octavia, dedicated to Mary Champion de Crespigny
.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 758
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2d ser. 24 (1798): 471
Dedications
Eliza Parsons
EP
's two-act comedy The Intrigues of a Morning (adapted from Molière
's Monsieur de Pourclaugnac) was produced at Covent Garden
. It was printed the same year, dedicated to Mary Champion de Crespigny
.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968, 5 vols.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Dedications
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
She wrote it before the death of Catharine Macaulay
, though it appeared afterwards. Lucy Aikin
said she wrote it at about fifteen, which exaggerates her youth by only a year.
The Monthly Repository. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 33 vols.
1 n.s., 1827.126
Her...
Dedications
Eliza Parsons
It was in press in late October;
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 593
EP
wrote its dedication to Mrs Crespigny
, who first encouraged me to commit them to the Public, on 12 November.
Parsons, Eliza. Ellen and Julia. William Lane, 1793, 2 vols.
1: prelims
In a humble...
Dedications
Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson
SSW
dedicated to Mary Champion de Crespigny
(as Lady de Crespigny) her second novel, The Fugitive Countess; or, Convent of St. Ursula. A Romance.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
2: 260
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
It was EOB
's uncle by marriage Sir David Ogilvy
who introduced her to Mary Champion de Crespigny
, dedicatee of The Female Geniad.
This information was privately supplied by scholar Jan Fergus
.
Friends, Associates
Mariana Starke
From at least the late 1770s MS
and her family were on terms of close friendship with Eliza
and William Hayley
; Mariana's earliest extant letter to Eliza Hayley is dated 22 December 1780. William...
Friends, Associates
Mary Robinson
After MR
became known as the prince's mistress, the double standard in public morality made it virtually impossible for respectable women to treat her as a friend. Her admiration for Sarah Siddons
was not reciprocated...
Friends, Associates
Jane Porter
JP
was also a friend of Mary Robinson
—actress, poet, and novelist—but this friendship was threatened by Robinson's position outside respectable society. When Robinson published some lines about JP
in a newspaper, Mary Champion de Crespigny
Leisure and Society
Anna Margaretta Larpent
On 17 April 1790 AML
went to Mary Champion de Crespigny
's private theatre and saw a performance of Mariana Starke
's tragedy The British Orphans. She was at the theatre (a public one...
Performance of text
Mariana Starke
A lost tragedy by MS
entitled The British Orphans was performed at Mary Champion de Crespigny
's private theatre in Camberwell near London.
One catalogue lists this work as published in 1805. Years later SSW
wrote that she had once entertained literary ambitions. It was the patronage of Lady Charlotte Finch
that enabled her, when already a seasoned...
Publishing
Ann Thicknesse
While the title-page says Volume the First, the dedication to Richard Graves
(a neighbour near Bath) hopes he will enjoy this second volume because he enjoyed the first.
Thicknesse, Ann. Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France. J. Dodsley, E. and C. Dilly, R. Cruttwell, and T. Shrimpton, 1778.
titlepage, iii
Elizabeth Carter is replaced...
Publishing
Ann Thicknesse
The first volume has a frontispiece portrait of AT
, and the second has a companion piece of her late husband
.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
2: 125
The book is dedicated to Fashion Herself,
Thicknesse, Ann. The School for Fashion. Reynell, Debrett and Fores, and Robinson, 1800, 2 vols.
1: vi
whom...
Timeline
By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...
Women writers item
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford
published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.
