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.
Sarah Stickney Ellis
remarked (rather censoriously and in a remarkable echo of fictional employers imagined by Samuel Johnson
and by the servant-poet Elizabeth Hands
): I don't know that I should have liked it, if...
Publishing
Anna Seward
AS
published an anonymous and in the main uncomplimentary Character of the recently-dead Samuel Johnson
(a kind of obituary) in the General Evening Post.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
111
Publishing
Anna Seward
AS
wrote, as Benvolio, a series of letters for the Gentleman's Magazine, cutting Johnson
down to size in response to Boswell
's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
139-42
Publishing
Anna Seward
AS
contributed to debate on Boswell
's Life of Johnson with extracts in the Gentleman's Magazine from her correspondence about Johnson with William Hayley
, dating from 1782.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
143, 201-3
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Seward
A family story related that AS
's grandfather John Hunter
, who became Samuel Johnson
's schoolmaster, had begun life as a foundling.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
2
Friends, Associates
Anna Seward
Acquainted with Hester Piozzi
(and an admirer of her wit),
Seward, Anna. Letters of Anna Seward. Editor Constable, Archibald, Vol.
6 vols.
, A. Constable.
2: 102
AS
was long but less warmly acquainted with Johnson
. She accused him both of malice (repeatedly) and of liking only worshippers...
Literary responses
Anna Seward
Mary (Young) Sewell
praised the author in a poem beginning O Thou! whoe'er thou art—Oh Bard divine! Since she did not know AS
's identity, she may have written her poem in the months before...
Reception
Anna Seward
Publication of a Beauties of was an accolade which put AS
on a par with, for instance, Johnson
or Richardson
.
Friends, Associates
Mary Scott
MS
was probably a friend from an early age of the dissenting hymn-writer Anne Steele
, who lived not very far away and who was a generation older. They spent much time together in 1773...
Textual Features
Mary Scott
MS
brings her list up to date with significant women writers who have published since the appearance of The Feminead. Her information is not perfect—she credits Anna Williams
with some works actually written by...
politics
Sarah Scott
They believed that women could think and write in freedom only outside relationships with men. Although Mary Astell
's writing influenced them, they insisted that women must be involved in society and not withdraw into...
Textual Features
Sarah Scott
The Introductory History of Sweden, from The Middle of the Twelfth Century is in effect an essay on biography and historiography. It argues the importance of biography, and the influence which even minor figures exercise...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
MAS
adds a new aesthetic category, the contemplative sublime, alongside the Burke
an or terrible sublime and other categories related to the Burkean beautiful. She derives her thinking from women as well as men. In...
Intertextuality and Influence
Susanna Haswell Rowson
The title-page quotes Samuel Johnson
asserting that an author has nothing but his own merits to stand or fall on. The Birth of Genius, an irregular ode, offers advice to my son to love...
Textual Production
Susanna Haswell Rowson
During her work on this novel SHR
was appearing regularly on stage, learning nearly forty different parts, and writing as well three plays, several songs, and an address in verse.
Epley, Steven. “Susanna Rowson’s Bible Abridgement and Its Relationship to Her Most Famous Novel”. American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Conference, Boston, MA.
