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.
The book is dedicated to those who may not prefer Scotland to Truth, but certainly prefer Scotland to enquiry—
Tey, Josephine. Claverhouse. Collins.
prelims
in a submerged allusion to Samuel Johnson
's pronouncement: A Scotchman must be a...
Textual Production
Angela Thirkell
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.
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 ....
Reception
Sarah Trimmer
ST
's work made a great impact. She was one of the twenty-four most-reviewed women writers of 1789-90.
Hawkins, Ann R., and Stephanie Eckroth, editors. Romantic Women Writers Reviewed. Vol. 3 vols., Ashgate Publishing Company.
Despite the title, the travel in this sequel or companion to The Juvenile Travellers confines itself to the British Isles, where one of the most pressing topics of local interest is association with writers...
Textual Production
Jane Warton
Her brother Joseph
(who had been invited to contribute by Samuel Johnson
in March) wrote to her on 26 April beg[ging] your Assistance in giving us some Pictures drawn from real Life. . ....
Textual Features
Jane Warton
In this last publication JW
was concerned to disabuse the public of the idea that her younger brother had enjoyed drinking and smoking with low persons in alehouses (it was the allegation of low company...
Textual Features
Susanna Watts
SW
takes steps to prevent the cause of slavery entirely dominating her work, which, she announces, it will be devoted to the cause of suffering animals as well as to that of suffering men.
Watts, Susanna. The Humming Bird. I. Cockshaw.
34
Textual Production
Anna Williams
When Boswell
read the elegy On the Death of Stephen Gray
, F. R. S., The Author of the Present Doctrine of Electricity, he at once suspected it was by Johnson
. Williams stoutly...
The New Annual Register praised the poem's thoughts, imagery, and versification, and remarked that the concluding description of the rise of art and science rises to no small degree of sublimity.
Kennedy, Deborah. Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution. Bucknell University Press.
28
Samuel Johnson
...
Literary responses
Helen Maria Williams
These volumes moved James Boswell
, in a revised edition of his life of Johnson, to withdraw his earlier description of HMW
as amiable and to assert that Johnson
would have found her current attitudes...
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Williams
AW
's father Zachary or Zachariah
, died. Johnson
's obituary for the newspapers said he was aged eighty-two and had been ill this time for eight months.
Larsen, Lyle. Dr. Johnson’s Household. Archon Books.