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.
As well as her central allusion to Barbauld, AG
claims authority for her work by quoting Milton
on her title-page and later as well, and by echoing, in her deliberately derivative, that is traditional style...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Austen
She applies to her friend a remark about Samuel Johnson
from Boswell
's Life: that her death left no-one living who resembled her.
Austen, Jane. Minor Works. Editor Chapman, Robert William, Oxford University Press.
440-2
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Collier
Johnson
incorporated three quotations from the Art of Tormenting in his Dictionary—a marker of deeply the book impressed him.
Brewer, Charlotte. “’A Goose Quill or a Gander’s?’: Female Writers in Johnson’s Dictionary”. Samuel Johnson: The Arc of the Pendulum <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl="m">Dictionary</span>, edited by Freya Johnston and Lynda Mugglestone, Oxford University Press, pp. 120-39.
124, 129
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Wollstonecraft
They included The first book of a series of lessons for children (written for MW
's elder daughter, Fanny Imlay
); a series of personal letters addressed to Imlay
(passionately expressive, ruggedly self-analytical), and to...
Intertextuality and Influence
Henrietta Battier
She hoped to get a volume of her collected poems published while she was in London in 1784, and enlisted the aid of Samuel Johnson. Johnson
offered positive encouragement (assuring her he had often been...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
MAS
adds a new aesthetic category, the contemplative sublime, alongside the Burke
an or terrible sublime and other categories related to the Burkean beautiful. She derives her thinking from women as well as men. In...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Steele
Surviving prose by AS
includes miscellaneous as well as predominantly religious pieces. The Journey of Life, reminiscent of John Bunyan
's The Pilgrim's Progress or Samuel Johnson
's Vision of Theodore, opens with...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Carter
The reviewers of this collection were appreciative; the Critical's high praise included, however, heavy emphasis on gender.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
12 (1762): 180-3
This monthly number of the Critical appeared with its date (1762) misprinted as 1761...
Instructor
David Garrick
He attended the tiny, unsuccessful school on which Samuel Johnson
lost his wife's money.
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 Scott
MS
was probably a friend from an early age of the dissenting hymn-writer Anne Steele
, who lived not very far away and who was a generation older. They spent much time together in 1773...
Friends, Associates
Mary Masters
Among the households where she lived were those of Elizabeth Carter
(who sometimes read her work and discussed it with her) and of Edward Cave
(the proprietor of the Gentleman's Magazine). It was Carter...
Friends, Associates
Anna Margaretta Larpent
In 1776 the future AML
recorded meeting the Corsican patriot Paoli
and Dr Johnson
ye Great.
Feminist Companion Archive.
After her marriage her own and her husband's work brought her into contact with the cultured elite of London...
Friends, Associates
Catherine Talbot
Six months later CT
was staying with the duchess on an extended visit. She was also a good friend of Elizabeth Montagu
(of whose closeness to Carter she was sometimes jealous); of Montagu's friends George Lyttelton
Friends, Associates
W. B. Yeats
Several women writers and public figures played very important roles in Yeats's life. Lady Gregory
(whom he first met in London in 1894 and whose close friend he became in 1896) played a crucial role...