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.
She may have been acting on the advice of Johnson
, who believed that social and domestic records were regrettably rare.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.
70
Intertextuality and Influence
Ellen Johnston
In contrast to the life-writings of her working-class contemporary Hannah Cullwick
, EJ
's autobiography is remarkably self-reflexive and literary. She says that an account of her life in Dundee alone, her trials, disappointments, joys...
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
Mary Latter
ML
here accords honorific citation to Dryden
and Pope
,
Latter, Mary. Pro & Con. T. Lowndes.
31-2
repeated mockery to the over-long words she sees as favoured by Dr Johnson
,
Surviving prose by AS
includes miscellaneous as well as predominantly religious pieces. The Journey of Life, reminiscent of John Bunyan
's The Pilgrim's Progress or Samuel Johnson
's Vision of Theodore, opens with...
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte Nooth
The novel combines domestic humour and social satire. The courtship of Eglantine Fortescue and the young officer Augustus Fitzroy is almost overshadowed by the broad-brush picture of their families and friends. Eglantine incurs disapproval first...
Intertextuality and Influence
Cicely Hamilton
CH
took as her text a couplet by Samuel Johnson
: The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, / For we that live to please, must please to live.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(5 March 1924): 12
While thoroughly...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth B. Lester
This work quotes Cowper
on the title-page. The short stories (genuinely short this time) include A Few Days from My Journal (which opens with Johnson
's well-known remark to Boswell
about the pleasure of driving...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Wollstonecraft
They included The first book of a series of lessons for children (written for MW
's elder daughter, Fanny Imlay
); a series of personal letters addressed to Imlay
(passionately expressive, ruggedly self-analytical), and to...
Leisure and Society
Maria Edgeworth
John Downman
painted an attractive half-length portrait of her in watercolour and pencil (now at Princeton University
) in 1807. After it changed hands at the Peyraud
sale in 2009, a reproduction of it was...
Leisure and Society
Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan
Her bluestocking assembly, which ran from at least 1781, was modelled on that of her husband's relation Elizabeth Vesey
. Anti-bluestocking prejudice may perhaps have fed into her daughter's problems with her mother-in-law, and the...
Leisure and Society
Elizabeth Carter
Joseph Highmore
painted EC
in about 1738, holding a book in her hand and about to be crowned with a laurel wreath. This picture seems to be related to Samuel Johnson
's poem To Eliza...
Leisure and Society
Hester Lynch Piozzi
The National Portrait Gallery
lists twelve portraits of HLP
, dated 1781 to 1811 (though some of these derive from each other and a couple are conversation-piece prints). Sir Joshua Reynolds
painted her with her...
Leisure and Society
Joanna Baillie
In the earlier 1840s, however, she was still a keen reader. She tackled the first edition of Frances Burney
's Diary and Letters out of a desire to get some insight into the literary society...
Leisure and Society
Maria Susanna Cooper
MSC
kept up with contemporary publications. She asked her son Astley to send her from London the latest volume of Johnson
's edition of Shakespeare
Cooper, Bransby Blake. The Life of Sir Astley Cooper, Bart. John W. Parker.