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.
ECK
relates her experiences at the English and at various European courts, and includes sketches and anecdotes of famous people she knew, including those of an earlier generation like Samuel Johnson
and Frances Reynolds
...
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. George Allen and Unwin.
72
Beginning in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Montagu
The patriotic element in EM
's reading of Shakespeare is crucial. She magisterially rebukes Voltaire's view of her admired author as having been primitive and unpolished, and seeks to outmanoeuvre the prestige of the French...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Moody
Personal matters mingle with others of public or topical interest, as EM
addresses Joseph Priestley
on the inter-relation of matter and spirit, Marie Antoinette
on her sufferings before her execution, and Dr Thomas Huet
on...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
John Oliver Hobbes
JOH
sometimes discusses her own writing, career, and ambition: One's place in literature is a possession—never a concession. And one knows one's place. I don't wish to be judged—one way or the other—till I am...
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.
Parker, Patricia L. Susanna Rowson. Twayne.
15
Her preface (on the...
Textual Production
Elizabeth (Cavendish) Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater
The present BL
Egerton MS 607 was at one time owned by the author's descendant Samuel Egerton Brydges
. Two contemporary copies of this manuscript, one of them with extensive and important annotation by the...
Textual Production
Anna Williams
When Boswell
read the elegy On the Death of Stephen Gray
, F. R. S., The Author of the Present Doctrine of Electricity, he at once suspected it was by Johnson
. Williams stoutly...
Textual Production
Frances Reynolds
A manuscript of this in the Hyde Collection (now at the Houghton Library
, Harvard
) bears revisions by Samuel Johnson
, in red ink which he told FR
she could easily remove with water...
Textual Production
Susanna Haswell Rowson
The following year came A Spelling Dictionary, Divided into Short Lessons, for the Easier Committing to Memory. This was, as the title-page acknowledged, selected from Johnson
's Dictionary. It presented words in groups...
Textual Production
Mary Ann Kelty
According to a reminiscence from the early half of 1868 by a reader who had been a Cambridge
undergraduate when the book appeared, MAK
first thought of titling her novel after its heroine, but was...
Textual Production
Hannah More
Johnson
suggested some little alterations in Sir Eldred, though none in The Bleeding Rock.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press.
45
Textual Production
Angela Thirkell
Her title comes from an anecdote in Boswell
's The Life of Samuel Johnson, about a man who tried to be a philosopher, but could not manage it because cheerfulness kept breaking in.
Johnson
found at this stage a good deal to criticize but also much to praise. The work possessed, he said, such force of comprehension, and such nicety of observation as Locke
or Pascal
might be...
Timeline
27 June 1777: The clergyman William Dodd was executed for...
Building item
27 June 1777
The clergyman William Dodd
was executed for forgery despite the efforts of many distinguished people to win him a pardon.
15 January 1778: A Scottish court found in favour of Joseph...
Building item
15 January 1778
A Scottish court found in favour of Joseph Knight
, a slave of African origin who had been brought to Scotland and now sued for his liberty. In effect this abolished slavery in Scotland: a...
By September 1782: The Letters of the black Londoner Ignatius...
Writing climate item
By September 1782
The Letters of the black Londoner Ignatius Sancho
were published two years after the author's death.
7 November 1783: The last public hanging took place at Tyburn...
Building item
7 November 1783
The last public hanging took place at Tyburn in London (near where Marble Arch now stands), putting an end to the practice of parading the condemned through town en route to the scene of execution.
1 October 1785: The year after Johnson's death, Boswell published...
Writing climate item
1 October 1785
The year after Johnson
's death, Boswell
published The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.
7 December 1789: Hester Lynch Piozzi heard the African John...
April 1791: The month before the appearance of his Life...
Writing climate item
April 1791
The month before the appearance of his Life of Samuel Johnson
, and as parliament debated the bill to abolish slavery, James Boswell
published a long poem entitled No Abolition of Slavery; or, The Universal...
16 May 1791: James Boswell published The Life of Samuel...
Writing climate item
16 May 1791
James Boswell
published The Life of Samuel Johnson, on the twenty-eighth anniversary of the day that he and Johnson first met.
March 1824-May 1829: Walter Savage Landor published Imaginary...
Writing climate item
March 1824-May 1829
Walter Savage Landor
published Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen.
February 1906: Publisher J. M. Dent launched Everyman's...