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...
Textual Features Anna Letitia Barbauld
The series has a general introduction, On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing, and a Preface, Biographical and Critical for each novelist, which in its echo of the full and original title of Johnson's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Matilda Betham
Her attitudes and judgements are unfailingly interesting. She knows that Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (whom she calls Mary Herbert), was not only a great encourager of letters but also herself an ingenious...
Publishing Elizabeth Carter
The book had gone to press in June 1757.
Feminist Companion Archive.
The original press run of 1,018 copies had to be supplemented with a further 250. First of several more editions was the Dublin one of the...
Literary responses Maria Susanna Cooper
The Critical Review welcomed MSC 's delineation
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
27 (April 1769): 297
of both characters and domestic life. It did, however, feel that the new bride's death was too precipitate and that the heroic fortitude of...
Occupation David Garrick
This began his career as theatre manager. One of a manager's duties might be considered to be the putting on of new plays, to ensure the health of the theatre of the future, but familiar...
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...
Literary responses Phebe Gibbes
This novel aroused much interest. One letter was reprinted almost entire, without attribution, on 2 July 1789 in the Aberdeen Magazine as a Picture of the Mode of living at Calcutta. In a letter from...
Textual Features Phebe Gibbes
The heroine, who is initially called Ella, is represented as needing to read novels in order to learn about social skills, duties, and distinctions as depicted by a Brooks [sic], a Sheridan , a Burney
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...
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...
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...
Textual Features Catherine Hutton
The major voice in this epistolary novel is that of the fifty-one-year-old
Hutton, Catherine. Oakwood Hall. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
1: 9
old maid Jane Oakwood (who at the outset is making a visit back to the home of her youth, and who...
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.
3: 95
Performance of text Elizabeth Inchbald
EI 's farce or comedy Animal Magnetism (advertised on 23 April, but postponed) came on at Covent Garden, accompanying Frances Brooke 's Rosina.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
5: 1059, 1060

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.

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.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

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 .

Texts

Brooke, Frances. All’s Right at Last; or, The History of Miss West. F. and J. Noble, 1774.
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.
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.
Brooke, Frances. Rosina. T. Cadell, 1783.
Brooke, Frances. The Excursion. T. Cadell, 1777.
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.
Brooke, Frances. The History of Lady Julia Mandeville. R. and J. Dodsley, 1763.
Brooke, Frances. The Kenrickad. W. Griffin, 1772.
Brooke, Frances. The Old Maid. A. Millar.
Brooke, Frances. The Siege of Sinope. T. Cadell, 1781.
Brooke, Frances. Virginia. A. Millar, 1756.