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.
Her letters to her children are charming, though she seems to have encouraged the kind of rivalry among them which Samuel Johnson
deplored. In November 1753, when Robert was eight, she wrote to him: I...
Textual Production
Ann Hatton
The dedication, to Mrs Carsgill
of Holme Lodge, Northumberland, mentions past discussions with her on the topic of the passions, and cites Johnson
's Life of Savage to prove their violence.
Hatton, Ann. Deeds of the Olden Time. A. K. Newman.
This bears no relation to Susanna Haswell Rowson
's Rebecca; or, The Fille de Chambre, 1792. It sounds, however, like a...
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Hannah More
HM
published her first poem, the ballad Sir Eldred of the Bower, revised with the help of Samuel Johnson
. It was printed with another poem, The Bleeding Rock, bearing the date of...
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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. . ....
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Hester Mulso Chapone
Hester Mulso (later HMC
) contributed four brief letters from imaginary, high-society correspondents to the tenth number of Samuel Johnson
's Rambler.
Johnson, Samuel. The Rambler. Editors Bate, Walter Jackson and Albrecht B. Strauss, Yale University Press.
1: 51-4
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Barbara Hofland
BH
published The Merchant's Widow and her Family. A Novel, with a title-page quotation from Samuel Johnson
and a date of 1814.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
4th ser. 4 (1813): 448
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
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Anna Letitia Barbauld
Here ALB
achieves a note of near-tragic dignity in face of political defeat—a note reminiscent of the weight and complexity of Johnson
's satires or of the recognition of defeat in her own Corsica.
Textual Features
Anita Desai
In The Indian Writer's Problems (which appeared in Quest in 1970 and in the Literary Criterion in 1975, and was reprinted in Perspectives on Anita Desai), she remarks that English is the language that...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Strutt
The book had coloured illustrations. ES
adopts here a relaxed, informal tone. She pays more attention than formerly to scenery (though she insists that only truly personal responses are interesting), but also to the humdrum...
Textual Features
Catherine Gore
The title-page quotes Byron
pronouncing shame to the land of the Gaul.
Gore, Catherine. The Lettre de Cachet; and, The Reign of Terror. J. Andrews.
title-page
A preface combats the general prejudice against a single volume
Gore, Catherine. The Lettre de Cachet; and, The Reign of Terror. J. Andrews.
iii
by citing works of fiction which are short but widely admired...
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Rachel Hunter
RH
defends her project with due modesty in a prefatory dialogue with a reader whom she calls Mr Not-At-All (after the opening words of all his answers). She says she writes for the improvement of...
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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...
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Eliza Fenwick
For this anthology EF
gathered mostly improving pedagogical material, drawing on revered literary names like Shakespeare
and Milton
, as well as more recent and controversial writers like Thomas Chatterton
and Helen Maria Williams
...