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.
Among the households where she lived were those of Elizabeth Carter
(who sometimes read her work and discussed it with her) and of Edward Cave
(the proprietor of the Gentleman's Magazine). It was Carter...
In London HB
met many leading figures in cultural and intellectual life. She visited and confided in Samuel Johnson
, and developed a warm admiration for him.
Battier, Henrietta. The Protected Fugitives. James Porter, 1791, http://Bodleian: 280 i 105.
Georgiana did not restrict herself to this circle. She made some eminent older friends in the world of literature and culture, like Mary Delany
, Elizabeth Montagu
, and Samuel Johnson
. From 1777 she...
Friends, Associates
Susannah Dobson
Samuel Johnson
, on the other hand, called SDthe Directress of rational conversation,
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, The Hyde Edition, Princeton University Press, 1992–1994, 5 vols.
4: 147
which sounds as if he was siding here with his friend Lennox rather than with his friends Burney and...
Friends, Associates
Frances Burney
FB
made friends in the older generation as well as her own. The whole Burney family loved and were loved by David Garrick
. Sir Joshua Reynolds
, who lived barely fifty yards away from...
Friends, Associates
W. B. Yeats
Several women writers and public figures played very important roles in Yeats's life. Lady Gregory
(whom he first met in London in 1894 and whose close friend he became in 1896) played a crucial role...
Friends, Associates
Mary Jones
Samuel Johnson
, visiting Oxford, boasted to MJ
of the closeness of his friendship with Charlotte Lennox
; a few months later Jones wrote to Lennox, to say she would be visiting London soon.
Isles, Duncan. “The Lennox Collection (Continued)”. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol.
19
, No. 1, Jan. 1971, pp. 36-60.
42-3
Friends, Associates
Hannah More
Here she began to gather the circle of friends which by the end of her long life had touched every cranny of English society. She had already met Edmund Burke
in Bristol the previous September...
Friends, Associates
Mary Palmer
MP
and her husband
entertained her brother Joshua
, sister Frances
, and Samuel Johnson
, sharing the hostess honours for several days with her married sister Elizabeth Johnson, who lived nearby.
Clifford, James L. Dictionary Johnson. McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Six months later CT
was staying with the duchess on an extended visit. She was also a good friend of Elizabeth Montagu
(of whose closeness to Carter she was sometimes jealous); of Montagu's friends George Lyttelton
Friends, Associates
Charlotte Lennox
CL
won the enduring friendship of Samuel Johnson
and Samuel Richardson
. (With Johnson she quarrelled at least once, and he took pains to heal the breach.) She introduced Giuseppe Baretti
to Johnson, and had...