Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Naomi Royde-Smith
-
Standard Name: Royde-Smith, Naomi
Birth Name: Naomi Gwladys Holroyd Smith
Self-constructed Name: Naomi Royde-Smith
Indexed Name: N. G. Royde-Smith
Indexed Name: Naomi Gwladys Royde-Smith
Married Name: Naomi Gwladys Milton
NRS
'a most important literary work included serving as midwife to the writings of others. She also published prodigiously, from early in the twentieth century: nearly forty novels, besides short stories, anthologies and compilations, biographies, reviews and criticism, four plays, and books about railways and other forms of transport.
To celebrate the appearance of her collection, RM
threw a party at her flat to which she ambitiously invited Walter de la Mare
. He attended, as did her publisher for this book, Frank Sidgwick
Literary Setting
Rose Macaulay
This novel, dedicated to the Philistines, the Barbarians, the Unsociable, has one of them as protagonist: the non-intellectual, extrovert, outdoor woman Denham Dobie, whose remote South American upbringing has done nothing to prepare her for...
Textual Production
Kate O'Brien
KOB
followed her first play (the previous year) with a second, The Bridge, opening this time at the Arts Theatre Club
.
Contemporary Authors online gives the date of the first performance as 31...
Literary responses
Kate O'Brien
KOB
called this not a historical novel, but an invention rising from reflection on its central characters.
Reynolds, Lorna. Kate O’Brien: A Literary Portrait. Colin Smythe; Barnes and Noble.
71
Naomi Royde-Smith
, however, reviewed it as not only KOB
's best novel to date but also...
Textual Production
Dorothy L. Sayers
Between 1928 and 1934, DLS
edited three volumes under the series title Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. Her introductions to these collections offered a scholarly history of the genre of detective...
Textual Production
Mary Martha Sherwood
She began it in connection with the writing game shared with her sister: the exchange of letters in the voice of French characters, modelled on those of Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
in Adelaide and Theodore; or...
Literary responses
Mary Martha Sherwood
Virginia Woolf
's Kitty Malone in The Years has read The History of the Fairchild Family. Naomi Royde-Smith
dedicated her book on MMS
to her parents, who in the year 1884 when a bachelor...
Reception
Mary Martha Sherwood
Naomi Royde-Smith
discussed this book and thought it in most respects a very good book for boys,
Royde-Smith, Naomi, and Denis Dighton. The State of Mind of Mrs. Sherwood. Macmillan.
58ff
though she dismissed its sequel, The History of John Marten (whose hero is grown up and a...
Material Conditions of Writing
Mary Martha Sherwood
Naomi Royde-Smith
thinks this was written some time before publication. It went through a whole series of American editions up as late as 1870, and was translated into German in 1841.
Royde-Smith, Naomi, and Denis Dighton. The State of Mind of Mrs. Sherwood. Macmillan.
Naomi Royde-Smith
thought equally highly of this novel both as child and as adult reader.
Royde-Smith, Naomi, and Denis Dighton. The State of Mind of Mrs. Sherwood. Macmillan.
xvi
Literary responses
Mary Martha Sherwood
The Spectator praised this book as bearing the stamp of truth and as having greater interest than some more ambitious fictions.
Stuart Bennett Rare Books & Manuscripts: A Catalogue of Books By, For, and About Women of the British Isles, 1696-1892. Stuart Bennett Rare Books & Manuscripts.
Naomi Royde-Smith
judged this technically the best of her works for its clarity and...
Textual Features
Mary Martha Sherwood
She writes too about social issues in India. Of Indian orphans left to die she demands: Who can describe, or even imagine, the cruelties which prevail in the dark corners of the earth? It...
Publishing
Mary Martha Sherwood
William Darton
issued, in a juvenile-reader format with coloured frontispiece, MMS
's novel Caroline Mordaunt; or, The Governess, which twentieth-century critic Naomi Royde-Smith
thought her simply best novel.
Royde-Smith, Naomi, and Denis Dighton. The State of Mind of Mrs. Sherwood. Macmillan.
51
Author summary
Mary Martha Sherwood
MMSwrote and signed more than 350 books (mostly for children, but including several adult novels), and left almost a score of fat volumes of diary. Some of her children's books, despite their uncompromisingly hell-fire...
Literary responses
May Sinclair
Naomi Royde-Smith
found this novel unprecedently forgettable for MS
.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
