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.
In April 1780 the author's cousin Edward Francisco Burney
illustrated Evelina in three stained drawings. The one for volume two shows the heroine in her mood of depression after returning home from her visit...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sarah Murray
The material already printed in 1799 was considerably re-arranged in 1803, and some of it moved to the second volume. SM
opens by describing the better route she has discovered for leaving London. She...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Taylor
Her idiosyncratic humour is well shown in The Toad's Journal. A moral passage at the end of this poem, in a different metre, draws a moral against idleness, or living in vain; but the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emma Parker
EP
says she has studied to avoid a dictatorial tone . . . considering herself rather as one of those [women] she is addressing.
Parker, Emma. Important Trifles. T. Egerton, 1817.
prelims
qtd. in
Feminist Companion Archive.
She writes as a strong-minded Christian, and makes use of...
Intertextuality and Influence
Frances Arabella Rowden
The notes explain many classical allusions and some to more recent literature. The Maid of Greenland, for instance, is Ajut, in Johnson
's Rambler essays 186 and 187.
Rowden, Frances Arabella. The Pleasures of Friendship. A Poem. 1810.
104
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Helme
The original title-page quotes Johnson
's Rasselas on the way that the enchantments of fancy belong to the time of youth and vanish with it.
Helme, Elizabeth. Instructive Rambles in London, and the Adjacent Villages. T. N. Longman and E. Newbery, 1798, 2 vols.
title-page
A preface declares EH
's intention of blending instruction...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Latter
ML
here accords honorific citation to Dryden
and Pope
,
Latter, Mary. Pro & Con. T. Lowndes, 1771.
31-2
repeated mockery to the over-long words she sees as favoured by Dr Johnson
,
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
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...
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
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
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
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, 1843, 2 vols.