Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Arabella Rowden
-
Standard Name: Rowden, Frances Arabella
Married Name: St Quintin
Used Form: St Quentin
FAR
, a schoolteacher by profession in the early nineteenth century, published mostly with instruction in mind. She began with a textbook on botany (designed to sanitize that topic after the work of Erasmus Darwin
had made it controversial for females) which included inset poems. After another poem, she reverted to prose for books of religious tone on pagan mythology and the classics of European literature.
"Frances Arabella Rowden, A Christian Wreath for the Pagan Deities, 1820, frontispiece." Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-SejoWvM7m7DUU3HsQVNXX6rII8-vgf8/view.
"Frances Arabella Rowden, A Christian Wreath for the Pagan Deities, frontispiece.2" Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nJPgYG8nK5FCJHaGDjmOZ2lINqErstyW/view.
"Frances Arabella Rowden, A Christian Wreath for the Pagan Deities, 1820, title-page." Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TJMQOyheVXd_pPiCo9dwfJx260cX5H3u/view.
St Quintin was a sophisticated educator who had been French Ambassador in London, and who published pedagogical books which took into consideration the age and development of the children for whom they were designed. He...
Education
Anna Maria Hall
AMH
's step-grandfather paid for her education. It is possible that she attended boarding school while living in England and it is said that she was at Hans Place School
, run by Frances Arabella Rowden
.
Keane, Maureen. Mrs. S.C. Hall: A Literary Biography. Colin Smythe, 1997.
110
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Rowden
Education
Elizabeth Taylor
Her first school, where she went at the age of six, was a little private establishment called Leopold House, which gave a grounding in English and maths and team games.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
12-13
When Betty was eleven...
Friends, Associates
Hester Lynch Piozzi
Mary Russell Mitford
(who did not know HLP
) later praised her. HLP had met Mitford's teacher the future writer Frances Arabella Rowden
, in Wales while Rowden struggled as a neglected, uncared for
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
She once took her friend and ex-teacher Frances Arabella Rowden
to hear Coleridge
lecture, and sat on tenterhooks as he belittled certain popular poems and seemed about to include one of Rowden's.
Pigrome, Stella. “Mary Russell Mitford”. The Charles Lamb Bulletin, Vol.
66
, Charles Lamb Society, Apr. 1989, pp. 53-62.
58
Friends, Associates
Anna Jane Vardill
While she lived in London AJV
moved in culturally active circles. She later described the poet Eleanor Anne Porden
(who lived not far away) as her dear friend, and was one of those who...
Instructor
Fanny Kemble
FK
was sent back to Paris (where she had already attended a school she hated) to spend four years studying with Frances Arabella Rowden
, who was a published author as well as a teacher.
Marshall, Dorothy. Fanny Kemble. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1977.
17
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Instructor
Lady Caroline Lamb
She attended, however, Monsieur de St Quintin
's school
at 22 Hans Place, Chelsea, where she was taught by Frances Arabella Rowden
, who was a writer as well as a teacher.
Douglass, Paul. Lady Caroline Lamb. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
22
Instructor
L. E. L.
At the age of five, Letitia Landon (later LEL
) began her education at the reputable Frances Rowden
's school for young women at 22 Hans Place, just a few doors from her own house in Chelsea.
L. E. L.,. “Critical Materials”. Letitia Elizabeth Landon: Selected Writings, edited by Jerome McGann and Daniel Riess, Broadview, 1997, p. various pages.
32
Stephenson, Glennis. Letitia Landon: The Woman Behind L.E.L. Manchester University Press, 1995.
23
Instructor
Mary Russell Mitford
She studied English, French, Italian, history, geography, Latin, and music (the subject at which she was least talented), and she acted in a production of Hannah More
's Search after Happiness.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
1: 189-92
She...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Russell Mitford
It seems that MRM
first caught the ambition of being a writer from her teacher Frances Arabella Rowden
. Her early letters about her own poetry are also largely concerned with Rowden's Pleasures of Friendship...
Occupation
Lady Caroline Lamb
LCL
was an amateur artist of real ability. One of her emblematic designs was engraved as a frontispiece to A Christian Wreath for the Pagan Deities, 1820, a pedagogic work on Greek and Roman...
Textual Production
Fanny Kemble
While she was at Frances Arabella Rowden
's school in Paris in the early 1820s, FK
produced a premature harvest of crude compositions which I dignified with the name of poetry. . . . a...
Textual Production
Joan Aiken
Next year came The Smile of the Stranger, a historicalromance whose English heroine experiences not only the French Revolution (since she has been living with her father in France) but other markers of...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Rowden, Frances Arabella. A Biographical Sketch of the Most Distinguished Writers of Ancient and Modern Times. 1820.
Rowden, Frances Arabella. A Biographical Sketch of the Most Distinguished Writers of Ancient and Modern Times. 1829.
Rowden, Frances Arabella. A Christian Wreath for the Pagan Deities. 1820.
Rowden, Frances Arabella. A Poetical Introduction to the Study of Botany. T. Bensley, 1801.
Rowden, Frances Arabella. The Pleasures of Friendship. A Poem. 1810.
