Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Brooke
-
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.
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...
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...
Occupation
Mary Robinson
MR
, under a heavy cloak of anonymity, opened her last theatre season, at Covent Garden Theatre
(playing in the mainpiece but apparently not in Frances Brooke
's Rosina, which followed it).
Highfill, Philip H. et al. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–1993.
13: 35
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968, 5 vols.
5: 582
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, 1960–1968, 5 vols.
5: 1059, 1060
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...
Textual Features
Catherine Hutton
The major voice in this epistolary novel is that of the fifty-one-year-old
old maid Jane Oakwood (who at the outset is making a visit back to the home of her youth, and who...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Postuma Simcoe
EPS
has an eye for picturesque scenes, which she describes as set pieces as well as sketching as an artist. Examples are the group formed by a servant and a native each knee-deep in a...
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...
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
Textual Production
Radagunda Roberts
RR
's version of the Abbé Millot
's Elements of the History of France (abridged) coincided with that by her friend Frances Brooke
of his History of England.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Susanna Haswell Rowson
In this humorous poem the author draws on her first-hand knowledge, as an actor and singer, with the London stage. She marshals thirty-four of it actors and writers to appear before Apollo, who metes out...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Margaretta Larpent
Criticism has an even freer rein in the later than in the earlier diaries. In 1790 AML
found Mariana Starke
's unpublished The British Orphans indelicate and Starke
's The Widow of Malabar showy but...
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...
Wealth and Poverty
Radagunda Roberts
She left the stock, the house, and several keepsakes to her sister, to her nephew Alfred William both her inkstand and her copy of John Hawkesworth
's translation of Fénelon
's Télémaque (apparently recognizing William...
