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.
David Simple predates all fictional work by Samuel Johnson
and all but the earliest works by Henry Fielding
and Samuel Richardson
, which are sometimes mistakenly spoken of as its models. It may be seen...
Textual Features
Janet Little
She consistently takes a challenging stance in face of authority. Ironically (in view of Johnson's championing of women writers and Burns's snobbish attitude about herself) she uses Samuel Johnson
as a symbol of the tyrant-critic...
Textual Features
Frances Brooke
Mary Singleton, supposed author of this paper, with its trenchant comments on society and politics, is an unmarried woman on the verge of fifty,
qtd. in
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press, 1983.
14
good-humoured as well as sharply intelligent: a contribution to the...
Textual Features
Lucy Hutchinson
Lucretius
, as a pagan philosopher and theologian (and, as LH
and her contemporaries believed, insane much of the time and sexually promiscuous), was a daring choice for one of her religious opinions.
Lucretius, and Lucretius. “Introduction”. Lucy Hutchinson’s Translation of Lucretius, "De rerum natura", edited by Hugh De Quehen, translated by. Lucy Hutchinson, University of Michigan Press, 1996, pp. 1-20.
8, 11
Textual Features
Mary Masters
MM
's poems here include those from the Gentleman's Magazine, sweepingly revised. There is, however, contrary to rumour, no specific internal or external evidence to suggest that Johnson
had any hand in the revision...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Burnet
This journal includes much philosophical writing. EB
's detailed critique of the mystic Antoinette de Bourignon
(correspondent of Anna Maria van Schurman
) embodies an ingenious rational explanation of enthusiasm or belief in a divine...
Textual Features
Sarah Fielding
This is a work of fiction, not documentary. It relates the stories of four ex-prostitutes sympathetically, presenting a strong argument for social reform. According to scholar Katherine Binhammer
, it is the most feminist among...
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, May 2001, pp. 53-75.
57
She sometimes draws on Johnson
's Dictionary but does not always entirely agree with it. She...
Textual Production
Hannah More
Johnson
suggested some little alterations in Sir Eldred, though none in The Bleeding Rock.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press, 1952.
45
Textual Production
Samuel Beckett
In late 1937 SB
was at work on a play about the relationship between Samuel Johnson
and Hester Thrale
,
Cohn, Ruby. Back to Beckett. Princeton University Press, 1973.
ix-x
which he intended to begin with her death (many years, therefore, after the relationship...
Textual Production
Susannah Dobson
Samuel Johnson
supposed, nearly a decade after its production, that The Life of Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné, 1772, was by SD
: actually it was the last work of Sarah Scott
, who always published anonymously.
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, The Hyde Edition, Princeton University Press, 1992–1994, 5 vols.
4: 147
Textual Production
Mary Bosanquet Fletcher
Mary Bosanquet (later Fletcher)
wrote almost weekly to the ex-fashionable preacher Dr William Dodd
(in prison for forgery) until he was hanged, out of concern for his soul.
The following year came A Spelling Dictionary, Divided into Short Lessons, for the Easier Committing to Memory. This was, as the title-page acknowledged, selected from Johnson
's Dictionary. It presented words in groups...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Carter
EC
's work, An Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, translated Crousaz' Examen; A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man, by Johnson, 1739, translated Crousaz' second...
Textual Production
Mary Ann Kelty
According to a reminiscence from the early half of 1868 by a reader who had been a Cambridge
undergraduate when the book appeared, MAK
first thought of titling her novel after its heroine, but was...
