Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane Barker
-
Standard Name: Barker, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Barker
Pseudonym: Fidelia
Pseudonym: A Young Lady
Pseudonym: Galesia
JB
, who wrote during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, shows remarkable daring and originality both as a poet and as a writer of prose fiction. Critical attention to her as a proto-feminist has recently been joined by attention to the political (Catholic and Jacobite) slant of her writings. From her debut as a coterie writer circulating her poems among a group of admiring male friends, JB
became a denizen of the literary marketplace and a voice both for the silent elements in women's experience and for the silenced Catholic and Jacobite elements in national life.
"Jane Barker" Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_entertaining_novels_of_Mrs._Jane_Barker,_of_Wilsthorp_in_Northamptonshire._-_Fleuron_N006580-12.png.
LLH
met the novelist Jane Barker
before she became a nun, and after entering the convent she became acquainted with the autobiographer Catherine Holland
.
Latz, Dorothy L., editor. “Neglected Writings by Recusant Women”. Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th-17th Centuries, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1997.
Aspects of this story were re-used by Jane Barker
(for Philinda's Story out of the Book in The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen, 1725) and by Thomas Southerne
and David Garrick
for works for...
Intertextuality and Influence
Aphra Behn
Behn's death, this elegy says, is a disaster for women's writing, for no other woman dares her Laurel wear.
qtd. in
Mendelson, Sara Heller. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Harvester Press, 1987.
182
For a while it remained possible for women writers like Jane Barker
to claim descent...
Literary responses
Katherine Philips
Soon after KP
's death Sir William Temple
published an elegy on her, made at the Desire of My Lady Temple
qtd. in
Roberts, William, scholar. “Sir William Temple on Orinda: Neglected Publications”. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol.
57
, 1963, pp. 328-36.
332-3
—his wife, the former Dorothy Osborne
. The progress of her reputation was...
Occupation
Edmund Curll
Curll was apprenticed sometime around 1697 to 1699, and set up in business for himself by early 1706.
Baines, Paul, and Pat Rogers. Edmund Curll, Bookseller. Clarendon Press, 2007.
12, 22
He became a particularly agile entrepreneur with a nose for new market niches and an...
politics
Lady Lucy Herbert
LLH
, like her parents, was a Jacobite and an activist in the cause. She looked on James Edward Stuart
as James III, rightful king of England and Scotland, and must have been delighted when...
Author summary
Fidelia
This symbolic name indicating faithfulness (which was also adopted for themselves by Mary Astell
, Jane Barker
, and the American writers Sarah Gill
, Hannah Griffitts
and Sukey Vickery
, as well as for...
Residence
Anne Finch
AF
and her husband lost their home in Westminster Palace at James's exile. They did not accompany him into exile, like Lady Nithsdale
or Jane Barker
; instead, they took shelter with various friends and connections.
McGovern, Barbara. Anne Finch and Her Poetry: A Critical Biography. University of Georgia Press, 1992.
55-7
Textual Features
Mary Carleton
The Case presents itself as a rendering of the truth for God to read, if nobody else. It depicts MC
according to several different fictional conventions. In youth she resembles the heroines of the Restoration...
Textual Features
Harriet Beecher Stowe
The book opens on the question how to relate a narrative. HBS
uses the metaphor of the patchwork quilt, which goes back at least as far as Jane Barker
in the 1720s. The story features...
Textual Production
Jane Collier
This single-page allegory in JC
's commonplace-book figures her literary collaboration with Sarah Fielding
as a shared project in dress-making.
Collier, Jane et al. Common Place Book. 1748–1755.
78
Londry, Michael. “Our dear Miss Jenny Collier”. Times Literary Supplement, 5 Mar. 2004, pp. 13-14.
13
Their method of needlework gives a pleasing new turn to the patchwork trope...
Textual Production
Judith Drake
The lengthy title lists the satirical sketches that the work contains.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
The attribution to JD
by name comes from a catalogue published by Edmund Curll
in 1741 (which mentions James Drake
as arranging the publication...
Timeline
1656: Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume,...
Writing climate item
1656
Abraham Cowley
published Poems; this volume, which included his Pindaric Odes and Miscellanies, confirmed his stature as the leading poet of the day.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
Texts
Barker, Jane. A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies. E. Curll and T. Payne, 1723.
Barker, Jane. Exilius, or the Banish’d Roman. E. Curll, 1715.
Wilson, Carol Shiner, and Jane Barker. “Introduction”. The Galesia Trilogy and Selected Manuscript Poems of Jane Barker, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. xv - xliv.
Barker, Jane. Love Intrigues, or The History of . . . Bosvil and Galesia. E. Curll, 1713.
Barker, Jane. Poetical Recreations. Benjamin Crayle, 1687.
Fénelon, François-de-Salignac-de-la-Mothe. The Christian Pilgrimage. Translator Barker, Jane, E. Curll and C. Rivington, 1718.
Barker, Jane. The Entertaining Novels of Mrs Jane Barker. A. Bettesworth and E. Curll, 1719.
Barker, Jane. The Galesia Trilogy and Selected Manuscript Poems of Jane Barker. Editor Wilson, Carol Shiner, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Barker, Jane. The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen. A. Bettesworth, 1726.
Barker, Jane. The Poems of Jane Barker: The Magdalen Manuscript. Editor King, Kathryn R., Magdalen College, 1998.