Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Delarivier Manley
-
Standard Name: Manley, Delarivier
Birth Name: Delarivier Manley
Married Name: Delarivier Manley
Nickname: Dela
Indexed Name: Mary de la Riviere Manley
Indexed Name: Mary Delarivier Manley
Pseudonym: Melpomene
Pseudonym: Thalia
Pseudonym: Delia
Pseudonym: The Translator of the New Atalantis
Pseudonym: Rivella
Used Form: Delarivière Manley
DM
was a pioneer in many fields: poetry, drama, journalism, and fiction, and the genres with which the fiction of her period interlocked: letters, soft pornography, satire, secret history, romance autobiography, and political polemic. She was proud of being first in the field on the Tory side during the pamphlet wars of Queen Anne's reign. As critic Paula McDowell
remarks, her writing identity was shaped by the new concept of print culture as an industry, an employer of labour.
McDowell, Paula. The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730. Clarendon.
Sydney Morgan
remarked with gusto: The murder is out!
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan,. Lady Morgan’s Memoirs. Editors Dixon, William Hepworth and Geraldine Jewsbury, AMS Press.
2: 431
She maintained that never since Delarivier Manley
's New Atalantis of 1709 (which probably few but herself had heard of by this date) had...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jane Brereton
The book opens, like other posthumous collections, with a biographical memoir, in this case by JB
's daughter Charlotte, who reinforces the poet's own positioning of herself as Welsh, female, and modest. Envisaging potential hostility...
Education
Elizabeth Boyd
EB
says nothing about how she learned the things she knew—an acquaintance with English literature, some history, and at least a smattering of French and Latin—but she may well have been largely self-taught. She often...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Boyd
EB
offers original, discriminating praise for women's writing: Susanna Centlivre
(her inspiration, she says), Eliza Haywood
(though she regrets her exposure of women's faults), Aphra Behn
, and Delarivier Manley
, whom she calls the...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Boyd
She dedicated it to her patron Lady Hertford
. The British Library
copy is 12604 ccc. 7. Harvard University
holds the only known copy of an undated set of subscription proposals, which is headed Any...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Boyd
Heather Harper
acknowledges that this is a conservative text, in that it lacks the drive of Delarivier Manley
, for instance, to lambast the vices of high life. She notes, however, that Boyd celebrates secularised...
Reception
Aphra Behn
An anonymous Young Lady (most probably Delarivier Manley
) published a pindaric elegy on AB
, along with another by Nathaniel Lee
.
Mendelson, Sara Heller. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Harvester Press.
182, 216n176
Spencer, Jane. Aphra Behn’s Afterlife. Oxford University Press.
30-1
Publishing
Marie-Catherine d' Aulnoy
This was a translation of her Mémoires de la cour d'Angleterre (1694). No copies have been traced, but Mrs William Henry Arthur
published a new translation of the original French in 1912.
Palmer, Melvin D. “Madame d’Aulnoy in England”. Comparative Literature, Vol.
27
, pp. 237-53.
251, 253
It...
Intertextuality and Influence
Penelope Aubin
The Life and Amorous Adventures of Lucinda, PA
's only novel told in the first person, takes place partly at Constantinople in Turkey, where Lucinda is sold as a slave after behaving with...
Literary responses
Mary Astell
The Tatler fastens on Astell's age, her virginity, and her assumed incompetence in practical or worldly matters. A further attack followed on 3 September, which linked her name with those of Elstob
and Manley
