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.
Rosenbaum, S. P. “An Educated Man’s Daughter: Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group”. Virginia Woolf: New Critical Essays, edited by Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, Vision; Barnes and Noble, pp. 32-56.
34
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Heyrick
Her mother, born Elizabeth Cartwright
, was a remarkable woman. She became engaged to please her family, but her fiancé died. After this she visited London and stayed with the publisher Robert Dodsley
. While...
Education
Matilda Betham-Edwards
Because of her mother's early death, MBE
, she said later, was largely self-educated, her teachers being plenty of the best books.
Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. D. Bryce.
Maria Dundas, aged seven (later MC
), began attending a school which occupied the Manor House at Draycot in Berkshire, run by the Miss Brights, who prided themselves on having been friends of Samuel Johnson
.
Gotch, Rosamund Brunel. Maria, Lady Callcott, The Creator of ’Little Arthur’. J. Murray.
19, 41
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Education
Elizabeth Carter
She progressed on her own later to other languages such as German, Portuguese and Arabic, and to studies with Thomas Wright
which included astronomy, mathematics, and ancient civilization and culture. Much has been made of...
Education
Mary Somerville
Flipping casually through a ladies' fashion magazine when she was about fourteen years old, Mary had her curiosity caught by an algebraic expression in a puzzle. She was told that the variables were Algebra...
Education
Evelyn Sharp
ES
received her first education at home, from her sisters Ethel, Bertha, and Mabel (the eldest), who taught the younger ones Bible stories on Sundays. At the same time she imbibed from her brothers the...
Education
Harriette Wilson
While she was still in her teens, although engaged in her second paid sexual relationship, her lover Frederic Lamb
set out to get her reading Milton
, Shakespeare
, Byron
, theRambler, Virgil
Education
Lydia Maria Child
At fifteen she read Paradise Lost (with her brother's encouragement) and was delighted with its grandeur and sublimity, but was bold enough to criticise Milton
for assert[ing] the superiority of his own sex in rather...
Education
Sarah Josepha Hale
Sarah Josepha Buell (later SJH
) was taught at home by her mother, with her father and her brother Horatio
(then a law student) joining in for such higher branches of learning as writing, Latin...
Dedications
Charlotte Lennox
The full title was Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon and of the last age; Lennox published it as the author of The Female Quixote. The price was fifteen shillings; the...
Dedications
Charlotte Lennox
The final volume came out on 22 February 1754.
Isles, Duncan. “The Lennox Collection”. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol.
18
, No. 4, pp. 317-44.
326
Its full title was Shakespear Illustrated; or, The Novels and Histories, on which the Plays of Shakespear are founded, collected and translated from the original...
Dedications
Charlotte Lennox
A second edition followed on 19 March 1761. It featured the first appearance of Lennox's name on a title-page, and a dedication (supplied by Johnson
; the first edition had none) to the Duchess of Newcastle
death
Thomas Otway
Samuel Johnson
professed unwillingness to believe the story to which he gave currency, that Otway was reduced to begging for food, and choked to death on a roll bought with a charitable gift.
Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the English Poets. Editor Hill, George Birkbeck, Oxford at the Clarendon Press.
1: 247
death
Anna Williams
AW
died at 8 Bolt Court near Fleet Street in London of mere inanition,
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, Princeton University Press.
4: 198
in the lodgings of Samuel Johnson
. She had been suffering inappetence,
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, Princeton University Press.
4: 187
eating very little, for some time.
Larsen, Lyle. Dr. Johnson’s Household. Archon Books.
