Frances Brooke

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Standard Name: Brooke, Frances
Birth Name: Frances Moore
Nickname: Fan
Nickname: Fanny
Married Name: Frances Brooke
Pseudonym: Mary Singleton, Spinster
Pseudonym: The Author of Lady Julia Mandeville
Used Form: Ariel
Used Form: Mrs Brooke
Used Form: Mrs Brookes
Used Form: the translator of Lady Catesby's Letters
FB wrote in many genres during the latter half of the eighteenth century: drama and translation as well as an innovative feminist periodical. Best known are her three novels including the first realistic novel in English to be set in a colonial society of North America.
Photograph of the painting of Frances Brooke by Catherine Read, c. 1771. She is seated, with one elbow resting on a table and her head resting on that hand, while her other hand lies on an open book in her lap. She is wearing a dress in yellow and orange, and a green shawl draped around her shoulders.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Birth Lucy Aikin
LA was born in Warrington, Lancashire.
William McCarthy, biographer of her famous aunt, suggests that she and her brother Edward may perhaps have been christened (with names not traditional in their family) after Ed...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Gilding
Like her, he was a contributor to magazines: a juvenile work by him appeared in the Lady's Magazine in 1775, and he later contributed to the European and other magazines under the name of Fidelio...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Heyrick
Her mother, born Elizabeth Cartwright , was a remarkable woman. She became engaged to please her family, but her fiancé died. After this she visited London and stayed with the publisher Robert Dodsley . While...
Friends, Associates Radagunda Roberts
Though very little is known of RR 's life, she was well acquainted with at least one other woman writer: Frances Brooke (whose son attended St Paul's while Roberts's brother was High Master, and who...
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...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Griffith
According to Frances Brooke (in an anecdote hinting at self-importance in EG ) she chose this spot with a view to becoming better acquainted with the comedian Samuel Foote —who, however, snubbed her in the...
Friends, Associates Frances Sheridan
In London they quickly acquired an influential and highly talented circle of friends, including Samuel Johnson , Samuel Richardson , Edward Young , Frances Brooke , Sarah Scott , and Sarah Fielding . Richardson admired...
Friends, Associates Anna Seward
Nine years later her meeting with the provincial literary hostess Anne, Lady Miller , marked the beginning of a wide and deep acquaintance with the literary world beyond Lichfield.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1931.
36-7, 71
She was on terms...
Friends, Associates Samuel Johnson
Johnson had a talent for friendship which he kept well exercised: the names mentioned here represent only a selection of his friendships. His early London friends, whom he met during a comparatively poorly documented period...
Intertextuality and Influence Samuel Richardson
Innumerable women novelists later conducted a dialogue (some admiring, some rebutting or revising) with SR . Few could ignore his influence completely. Frances Brooke wrote his biography; Anna Letitia Barbauld edited his letters, and Jane Austen
Intertextuality and Influence Catherine Hutton
Jane Oakwood says (presumably standing in for her author, as she often does) that in youth she was accused of imitating Juliet, Lady Catesby (Frances Brooke 's translation from Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni ).
Hutton, Catherine. Oakwood Hall. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819, 3 vols.
3: 95
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Inchbald
John Philip Kemble wrote the following May to ask after her progress. He imagined the story melodramatically, and enquired: how many distressed damsels and valorous knights?
qtd. in
Manvell, Roger. Elizabeth Inchbald: England’s Principal Woman Dramatist and Independent Woman of Letters in 18th Century London. University Press of America, 1987.
18
This year Inchbald was indeed reading sentimental novels...
Literary responses Charlotte Lennox
This time Lennox had at least a moderate stage success, bringing her a welcome author's benefit night.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968, 5 vols.
4: 1928ff
She became the first successful female novelist of her generation to break into theatre, as Frances Sheridan
Literary responses Radagunda Roberts
A reviewer (who supposed that the author was male) judged this work a useful further abridgement of an existing abridgement, suitable for young ladies at school.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Frances Brooke mentioned it to Richard Gifford as a...
Literary responses Phebe Gibbes
The notice in the Critical Review opened condescendingly. Guessing that the author was female, it warned its readers: It seldom happens that ladies equal in genius to Lennox , Brooke s, and Scott , figure...

Timeline

By 22 May 1755: George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited...

Women writers item

By 22 May 1755

George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited and published an anthology entitled Poems by Eminent Ladies.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
12: 512
Eger, Elizabeth. “Fashioning a Female Canon: Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and the Politics of the Anthology”. Women’s Poetry in the Enlightenment, The Making of a Canon 1730-1820, edited by Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain, St Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 201-15.
210
Guest, Harriet. Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750-1810. University of Chicago Press, 2000.
86-7
Lavoie, Chantel Michelle. Poems by Eminent Ladies: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Anthology. University of Toronto, 1999.
286-7

1 November 1755: A major earthquake at Lisbon in Portugal...

National or international item

1 November 1755

A major earthquake at Lisbon in Portugal killed more than 10,000 people (estimates vary), provoking theological debate between Rousseau and Voltaire about the nature of evil.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Mary; and, The Wrongs of Woman. Editor Kelly, Gary, World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 1980.
28, 211
Mantel, Hilary. “The Real Price of Everything”. London Review of Books, 21 June 2007, pp. 3-6.
3
King, Kathryn R. “The Young Lady, the Old Maid, and the Lisbon Earthquake”. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual conference, 19 Oct. 2017.
The heroine of Wollstonecraft 's first...

2 June 1756: The London Foundling Hospital was granted...

Building item

2 June 1756

The LondonFoundling Hospital was granted £10,000 on the condition of maintaining an open admissions policy.
Innes, Joanna. “The Domestic Face of the Military-Fiscal State: Government and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain”. An Imperial State at War, edited by Lawrence Stone, Routledge, 1994, pp. 96-127.
106
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
(1756) 26: 305
Innes gives the figure for the grant as thirty thousand pounds, but the Gentleman's Magazine...

21 February 1765: Frances Brooke (as Mary Singleton) published...

Building item

21 February 1765

Frances Brooke (as Mary Singleton) published a rebuke to two upper-class ladies for rudeness to the actress George Anne Bellamy .
Crouch, Kimberly. “The public life of actresses: prostitutes or ladies?”. Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, edited by Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, Longman, 1997, pp. 58-78.
68-9

1768: The second of the two leading subscribers'...

Writing climate item

1768

The second of the two leading subscribers' or metropolitan libraries opened in Leeds.
Raven, James. Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750-1800. Clarendon, 1992.
128-9
Poulson, Christine. “Hidden treasures”. The Author, Vol.
cxvii
, No. 4, 1 Dec.–28 Feb. 2006, pp. 145-6.
146

April 1774: The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah...

Women writers item

April 1774

The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah More 's The Inflexible Captive, quoted some lines which transform the Muses from ancient Greece into the living female poets of Britain.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
50 (April 1774): 243-51

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...

6 December 1830: Lucia Vestris became the first long-term...

Building item

6 December 1830

Lucia Vestris became the first long-term female theatre manager of the century, when she reopened the Olympic Theatre .
Appleton, William Worthen. Madame Vestris and the London Stage. Columbia University Press, 1974.
51
Booth, Michael R. et al. Three Tragic Actresses: Siddons, Rachel, Ristori. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
44-5

Texts

Brooke, Frances. All’s Right at Last; or, The History of Miss West. F. and J. Noble, 1774, 2 vols.
Edwards, Mary Jane, and Frances Brooke. “Editor’s Introduction”. The History of Emily Montague, Carleton University Press, 1985, p. xvii - lxxi.
Millot, Claude François Xavier. Elements of the History of England. Translator Brooke, Frances, J. Dodsley and T. Cadell, 1771, 4 vols.
Brooke, Frances. “Introduction”. The Excursion, edited by Paula R. Backscheider and Hope D. Cotton, University Press of Kentucky, 1997, p. ix - xlix.
Kaplan, Marijn S. et al. “Introduction”. Translations and Continuations: Riccoboni and Brooke, Graffigny and Roberts, translated by. Frances Brooke and Radagunda Roberts, Pickering and Chatto, 2015, p. i - xxix.
Riccoboni, Marie-Jeanne. Letters from Juliet, Lady Catesby, to Her Friend, Lady Henrietta Campley. Translator Brooke, Frances, R. and J. Dodsley, 1760.
Brooke, Frances. Marian. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800.
Framéry, Nicolas Etienne. Memoirs of the Marquis de St. Forlaix. Translator Brooke, Frances, J. Dodsley, 1770, 4 vols.
Brooke, Frances. Rosina. T. Cadell, 1783.
Brooke, Frances. The Excursion. T. Cadell, 1777, 2 vols.
Brooke, Frances. The Excursion. Editors Backscheider, Paula R. and Hope D. Cotton, University Press of Kentucky, 1997.
Brooke, Frances. The History of Charles Mandeville. W. Lane, 1790.
Brooke, Frances. The History of Emily Montague. J. Dodsley, 1769, 4 vols.
Brooke, Frances. The History of Emily Montague. Editor Edwards, Mary Jane, Carleton University Press, 1985.
Brooke, Frances. The History of Lady Julia Mandeville. R. and J. Dodsley, 1763, 2 vols.
Brooke, Frances. The Kenrickad. W. Griffin, 1772.
Brooke, Frances. The Old Maid. A. Millar, 1-37.
Brooke, Frances. The Siege of Sinope. T. Cadell, 1781.
Brooke, Frances. Virginia. A. Millar, 1756.