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.
Cokayne, George Edward. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. Editor Gibbs, Vicary, St Catherine Press.
In opening and closing she invokes Samuel Johnson
(a travel writer more interested in the...
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Jane Porter
She wrote this novel while living in London.
Porter, Jane. The Scottish Chiefs. Derby and Jackson.
19
In her preface to the first edition (now extremely rare)
Feminist Companion Archive.
she wrote that she had made no hesitation to accept truth as the helpmate of...
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Elizabeth (Cavendish) Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater
The present BL
Egerton MS 607 was at one time owned by the author's descendant Samuel Egerton Brydges
. Two contemporary copies of this manuscript, one of them with extensive and important annotation by the...
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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...
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Hannah More
Johnson
suggested some little alterations in Sir Eldred, though none in The Bleeding Rock.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press.
Later reprints often appeared as The Common Reader, First Series. VW
took her title from a formulation of Samuel Johnson
's, meaning that non-specialist, non-academic reader to whose taste, said Johnson, he was always...
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Charlotte Lennox
CL
's friends Samuel Johnson
and Samuel Richardson
both saw her as a professional writer with a career to fashion: a career which needed her presence in London, heart of the publishing industry. Richardson...
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Anna Williams
Johnson
wrote to Samuel Richardson
to enlist his support for AW
in her plan to compile a dictionary of philosophical, that is scientific, terms.
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, Princeton University Press.
1: 79-80
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Alice Meynell
In 1911 she edited a selection of writings by Samuel Johnson
.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
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Anna Williams
The Gentleman's Magazine published proposals, written for AW
by Samuel Johnson
, for a miscellany or collection of poems and essays which would include her own work along with some pieces by other people.
Larsen, Lyle. Dr. Johnson’s Household. Archon Books.
11-12, 16-17, 121
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Frances Reynolds
Most . . . but not all
Hill, George Birkbeck, editor. Johnsonian Miscellanies. Clarendon Press.
1: xi
of FR
's Recollections of Dr. Johnson was printed by John Wilson Croker
in his edition of Boswell
's Life of Samuel Johnson, as one...
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Ellis Cornelia Knight
ECK
published her first work, Dinarbas, a novel which acts as a continuation of Samuel Johnson
's Rasselas.
Kolb, Gwin J. “Forward”. Dinarbas, Colleagues Press.
vii
“Review of Dinarbas by Ellis Cornelia Knight”. The Analytical Review, Vol.
7
, J. Johnson, pp. 189-91.
189
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Charlotte Lennox
She had written most of it by November 1751. With Johnson
as mediator, she consulted Richardson
about revisions, denouement, optimum length (she reduced her plan from three volumes to two), and about her choice of...
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Hester Lynch Piozzi
Back in England, HLP
published her edition of Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.