Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Samuel Johnson
-
Standard Name: Johnson, Samuel
Used Form: Dr Johnson
Arriving in eighteenth-century London as one more young literary hopeful from the provinces, SJ
achieved such a name for himself as an arbiter of poetry, of morality (through his Rambler and other periodical essays and his prose fiction Rasselas), of the language (the Dictionary), and of the literary canon (his edition of Shakespeare
and the Lives of the English Poets) that literary history has often typecast him as hidebound and authoritarian. This idea has been facilitated by his ill-mannered conversational dominance in his late years and by the portrait of him drawn by the hero-worshipping Boswell
. In fact he was remarkable for his era in seeing literature as a career open to the talented without regard to gender. From his early-established friendships with Elizabeth Carter
and Charlotte Lennox
to his mentorship of Hester Thrale
, Frances Burney
, and (albeit less concentratedly) of Mary Wollstonecraft
and Henrietta Battier
, it was seldom that he crossed the path of a woman writer without friendly and relatively egalitarian encouragement.
Lady Anne lived much of her life in fashionable society, and her acquaintance was very wide. In Edinburgh in her early twenties she impressed and delighted Samuel Johnson
with an impromptu and complimentary bon mot...
Friends, Associates
Ellis Cornelia Knight
During her childhood, ECK
associated with a variety of celebrated people through her family connections. Her mother was a close friend of painter and writer Frances Reynolds
(sister to the more famous painter Sir Joshua Reynolds
In London HB
met many leading figures in cultural and intellectual life. She visited and confided in Samuel Johnson
, and developed a warm admiration for him.
Battier, Henrietta. The Protected Fugitives. James Porter, http://Bodleian: 280 i 105.
Georgiana did not restrict herself to this circle. She made some eminent older friends in the world of literature and culture, like Mary Delany
, Elizabeth Montagu
, and Samuel Johnson
. From 1777 she...
FB
made friends in the older generation as well as her own. The whole Burney family loved and were loved by David Garrick
. Sir Joshua Reynolds
, who lived barely fifty yards away from...
Friends, Associates
Jean Marishall
While in LondonJM
was in touch with a long list of patrons or prospective patrons, including those eminent in both the social and literary worlds. The socially prominent included (as well as a colonel...
Friends, Associates
Susannah Dobson
Samuel Johnson
, on the other hand, called SDthe Directress of rational conversation,
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, Princeton University Press.
4: 147
which sounds as if he was siding here with his friend Lennox rather than with his friends Burney and...
Friends, Associates
Radagunda Roberts
Though very little is known of RR
's life, she was well acquainted with at least one other woman writer: Frances Brooke
(whose son attended St Paul's while Roberts's brother was High Master, and who...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Montagu
EM
's relationship with Samuel Johnson
began with formal respect but a certain absence of warmth on both sides. She found his personal and social manners unacceptable. It seems that each may have resented the...
Friends, Associates
Mary Wollstonecraft
Newington Green was a fortunate place for MW
to have settled: it was a centre of intellectual Dissent. There she met the radical minister Richard Price
, the poet Samuel Rogers
, and the teacher...