Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Hamilton
-
Standard Name: Hamilton, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Hamilton
Nickname: Eliza Hamilton
In her own day EH
was best known and loved for My Ain Fireside (a song expressive of national Scottish feeling and the glorification of the domestic) and for Cottagers of Glenburnie, 1808, a novel of domestic improvement. In later generations her satire on the Jacobins has got her type-cast as an unmitigated conservative. In fact her writings in many genres (poems, novels, essays, biography, and writings on education, religion, and philosophy) combine a scholarly and an ironic bent, and her conservatism includes a strong streak of feminism. Her novels make less use than most of the marriage plot, and she presents single women as strong and admirable.
EF
developed a close friendship and a correspondence with Elizabeth Hamilton
.
Fletcher, Eliza. Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, of Edinburgh. Editor Mary, Lady Richardson, Printed at the offices of C. Thurman for private circulation.
The Longman
's project reported by Catherine Hutton
on 13 June this year, for a women's periodical bearing the names of ME
, BarbauldInchbald
, and Hamilton
, seems not to have materialised. It...
Reception
Maria Edgeworth
Scholarly and critical work on her ever since Marilyn Butler
's literary biography, 1972, has amassed a significant body of new understanding. In 2009 Susan Egenolf
discussed her work in political fiction along with some...
Friends, Associates
Maria Edgeworth
In Edinburgh she met Professor Dugald Stewart
, his wife Helen
, and the writer Elizabeth Hamilton
, with whom she developed a friendship continued by correspondence.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Clarendon.
197-9
Another writer whom she befriended closer to home was Mary Leadbeater
.
Textual Production
Maria Edgeworth
ME
's early letters to her friend Fanny Robinson
are earnest and priggish. By the 1790s she was sending the Ruxtons letters which have literary merit in themselves (mixing amusing anecdote and expressions of affection)...
Literary responses
Maria Edgeworth
The Critical Review notice on Leonora began with oblique reference to Elizabeth Hamilton
's Memoirs of Modern Philosophers.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
3d ser. 7 (1806): 215
It judged that the whole novel is written with great spirit...
Publishing
Maria Edgeworth
From early in her publishing career ME
sent out into the world short pieces as well as longer ones and collections of her own. In this way she placed stories in miscellaneous volumes (The...
Textual Production
Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne
Purdie and Smith worked at the behest of an all-female editorial committee
McGuirk, Carol. “Jacobite History to National Song: Robert Burns and Carolina Oliphant (Baroness Nairne)”. The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Vol.
47
, No. 2/3, pp. 253-87.
258
The anthology came out in six volumes, printing the music along with the words of its songs; its editor was the greatest...
Textual Features
Medora Gordon Byron
The fictional spinster here finds Miss Byron's bachelor sympathetic but querulous, and decides to make clear by a parallel account that unmarried women are not like that. I declare, on the honour of a...
Textual Features
Lady Eleanor Butler
Particularly worthy of mention is a jaunty, witty, perceptive Hymn to Diana, which addresses the goddess of chastity in the manner of a litany, with a string of petitions. Since Diana has decreed, says...
Intertextuality and Influence
Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Although HMB
was provoked to write by William Hayley
's unpleasant Philosophical, Historical and Moral Essay on Old Maids, 1785, she gives a mixed message. This begins with an epigraph drawn from Elizabeth Hamilton
Textual Production
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB
paid tribute to a close friend in Memoirs of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton.
Quarterly Review. J. Murray.
18: 542
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Having already praised many contemporary women writers in print, EOB
was now able to meet them. The move to London was accomplished principally through the zealous friendship of Miss Sarah Wesley
, who had already...
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Among EOB
's literary friends, Elizabeth Hamilton
was special. When Benger mentions Hamilton's delight in fostering unprotected talent, especially female talent, she is probably thinking of her own. She prints letters which are almost certainly...
