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.
Her title comes from an anecdote in Boswell
's The Life of Samuel Johnson, about a man who tried to be a philosopher, but could not manage it because cheerfulness kept breaking in.
Textual Production
Ann Hatton
The dedication, to Mrs Carsgill
of Holme Lodge, Northumberland, mentions past discussions with her on the topic of the passions, and cites Johnson
's Life of Savage to prove their violence.
Hatton, Ann. Deeds of the Olden Time. A. K. Newman.
prelims
Textual Production
Barbara Hofland
BH
published The Merchant's Widow and her Family. A Novel, with a title-page quotation from Samuel Johnson
and a date of 1814.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
4th ser. 4 (1813): 448
Textual Production
Frances Reynolds
Johnson
found at this stage a good deal to criticize but also much to praise. The work possessed, he said, such force of comprehension, and such nicety of observation as Locke
or Pascal
might be...
Textual Production
Hannah More
HM
published her first poem, the ballad Sir Eldred of the Bower, revised with the help of Samuel Johnson
. It was printed with another poem, The Bleeding Rock, bearing the date of...
Textual Production
Hester Mulso Chapone
Hester Mulso (later HMC
) contributed four brief letters from imaginary, high-society correspondents to the tenth number of Samuel Johnson
's Rambler.
Johnson, Samuel. The Rambler. Editors Bate, Walter Jackson and Albrecht B. Strauss, Yale University Press.
1: 51-4
Textual Production
Sarah Trimmer
Her spur to beginning it was reading the published personal writings of Samuel Johnson
, which moved her deeply. She wrote it in the most secret hours retreat, and without the least intention ....
Textual Features
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Here ALB
achieves a note of near-tragic dignity in face of political defeat—a note reminiscent of the weight and complexity of Johnson
's satires or of the recognition of defeat in her own Corsica.
Textual Features
Anita Desai
In The Indian Writer's Problems (which appeared in Quest in 1970 and in the Literary Criterion in 1975, and was reprinted in Perspectives on Anita Desai), she remarks that English is the language that...
Textual Features
Hester Lynch Piozzi
HLP
concentrates on the fine shades of difference between near synonyms, for instance Affability, Condescension, Courtesy, and Graciousness.
Winchester, Simon. “Roget and his Brilliant, Unrivalled, Malign, and Detestable Thesaurus”. Atlantic Monthly, Vol.
287
, No. 5, pp. 53-75.
57
She sometimes draws on Johnson
's Dictionary but does not always entirely agree with it. She...
Textual Features
Rachel Hunter
RH
defends her project with due modesty in a prefatory dialogue with a reader whom she calls Mr Not-At-All (after the opening words of all his answers). She says she writes for the improvement of...
Textual Features
Catherine Gore
The title-page quotes Byron
pronouncing shame to the land of the Gaul.
Gore, Catherine. The Lettre de Cachet; and, The Reign of Terror. J. Andrews.
title-page
A preface combats the general prejudice against a single volume
Gore, Catherine. The Lettre de Cachet; and, The Reign of Terror. J. Andrews.
iii
by citing works of fiction which are short but widely admired...
Textual Features
Sarah Chapone
This 70-page pamphlet, addressed to Parliament
, exhibits detailed knowledge of the law and of recent cases involving heiress marriage, adultery, etc. SC
finds the English law harsher to women than either ancient Roman or...
Textual Features
Mary Wollstonecraft
Though only about twenty percent of its extracts are written by women (the same proportion as from the Bible),
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
501
this book is feminist in its emphasis on the virtue of independent judgement as...
Textual Features
Eliza Fenwick
For this anthology EF
gathered mostly improving pedagogical material, drawing on revered literary names like Shakespeare
and Milton
, as well as more recent and controversial writers like Thomas Chatterton
and Helen Maria Williams
...