Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Wollstonecraft
-
Standard Name: Wollstonecraft, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Wollstonecraft
Married Name: Mary Godwin
Pseudonym: Mr Cresswick, Teacher of Elocution
Pseudonym: M.
Pseudonym: W.
MW
has a distinguished historical place as a feminist: as theorist, critic and reviewer, novelist, and especially as an activist for improving women's place in society. She also produced pedagogy or conduct writing, an anthology, translation, history, analysis of politics as well as gender politics, and a Romantic account of her travels in Scandinavia.
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This novel was written at such an early age, said RMR
, that some people thought it was really the work of her father
.
Archives of the Royal Literary Fund, 1790-1918.
A review, perhaps by Wollstonecraft
, in the Analytical Review...
Literary responses
Mariana Starke
A good review, perhaps by Mary Wollstonecraft
, in the Analytical, says: This interesting tale is told in easy flowing measures, and many sentiments occur that do honour to the writer's heart.. It...
Literary responses
Anna Maria Bennett
The Critical Review thought this the first of AMB
's novels to achieve excellence. This time, it said, the intricate story was well woven (at least in the first two volumes) and the plot and...
Literary responses
Cassandra, Lady Hawke
Some reviews were highly respectful. The Critical, while it just touched on too great a profusion of ornamental description, concentrated on good points. The story is conducted with great skill; intricately entangled, without too...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Inchbald
Nature and Art was praised in the Monthly and Critical Review, with polite endorsement of EI
's reputation.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 16 (1796): 325
The Analytical reviewer, probably Wollstonecraft
, showed herself harder to please...
Literary responses
Maria Edgeworth
The Analytical review (perhaps by Mary Wollstonecraft
) welcomed the book (referring to the author as male), deplored the hostility to new ideas in education even among those who should know better, and expressed the...
Literary responses
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
Mary Wollstonecraft
, though she saw many virtues in this book, was not happy that Adelaide was educated to be obedient, not independent-minded: that with all her accomplishments she was ready to marry any body...
Literary responses
Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
The review in the Critical reflected annoyance that the author had (oddly, since she had on balance been favourably treated by this journal) called it ill-natured.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
67 (1789): 397
In Argus, it claimed,...
Literary responses
Ann Radcliffe
Samuel Taylor Coleridge reviewed this novel somewhat belatedly for the Critical Review.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. The Bright Work Grows: Women Writers of the Romantic Age. Woodstock Books, 1997.
81
The review in the Analytical, probably Wollstonecraft
's, offered strong endorsement. AR
's uncommon talent for gothic, it said, had...
Literary responses
Susanna Haswell Rowson
The volume received a damning telegraphic review in the Analytical (perhaps by Wollstonecraft
), which reads, in its entirety, Weak prosaic attempts, without the images or harmony of poetry.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Todd, Janet and Marilyn ButlerEditors , Pickering, 1989.
7: 88
The Critical agreed that...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Inchbald
The Analytical reviewer, probably Wollstonecraft
, was unimpressed: insipid dialogues . . . the characters are uninteresting caricatures, and the incidents, childish tricks.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Todd, Janet and Marilyn ButlerEditors , Pickering, 1989.
7: 166
Literary responses
Olive Schreiner
The book is a landmark text. In an introduction to an edition of 1968, Doris Lessing
(who first read it when she was fourteen) identified it as one of the few rare books ....
English reviewers, for instance in the Gentleman's Magazine, were ready with their praise.
Dow, Gillian. “The British Reception of Madame de Genlis’s Writings for Children: Plays and Tales of Instruction and Delight”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, No. 3, pp. 367 - 81.
374
Jane Austen
implied in a letter of 1800 that the first volume of this work had left her mind stored...
Literary responses
Jane West
When the fourth volume appeared in 1789, the Critical found it heavy, languid and uninteresting, and judged the serial publication to have been a mistake.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
68 (1789): 495
Andrew Becket
in the Monthly and Mary Wollstonecraft
