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.
Bibliographer James Raven
notes a crescendo in novelistic echoes of FB
's works during the 1780s. Burney's brother Charles
, for instance, noted borrowings from both Evelina and Cecilia in his review for the Monthly...
Family and Intimate relationships
Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan
He was a relation (through his mother) of Agmondesham (or Agmondisham) Vesey
, second husband of the bluestocking Elizabeth Vesey
. From 1782 he was a member of the Club associated with Samuel Johnson
...
Rosenbaum, S. P. “An Educated Man’s Daughter: Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group”. Virginia Woolf: New Critical Essays, edited by Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, Vision; Barnes and Noble, pp. 32-56.
34
Family and Intimate relationships
Hester Lynch Piozzi
Hester Thrale (later HLP
) bore her first child, Hester Maria Thrale
, who was known by Johnson
's nickname for her, Queeney
.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.
54
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Williams
AW
's father Zachary or Zachariah
, died. Johnson
's obituary for the newspapers said he was aged eighty-two and had been ill this time for eight months.
Larsen, Lyle. Dr. Johnson’s Household. Archon Books.
30-1
Family and Intimate relationships
Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan
The couple had four daughters and a son.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
One of the daughters produced an English verse translation of Horace
which Samuel Johnson
assessed as very well for a young Miss's verses—
Boswell, James. Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Editors Hill, George Birkbeck and Laurence Fitzroy Powell, Clarendon.
3: 319
though...
Family and Intimate relationships
Hester Lynch Piozzi
Hester Thrale
bore her third living daughter, Lucy Elizabeth, whose second name was given in honour of Johnson
's dead wife.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.
81
Family and Intimate relationships
John Milton
Milton's three successive marriages, and his attitudes to women and to gender, have been a constant debating point for critics, biographers, and writers of fiction. Johnson
wrote that the first wife left him in disgust...
Family and Intimate relationships
John Milton
The early stages of this marriage were clearly fraught with difficulty. After only a few weeks, Milton's wife went home to Forest Hill, and did not return for probably as long as three years. Her...
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Williams
Zachary Williams's health improved radically after his eviction from the Charterhouse
, with better food and more comfort. He returned to his longitude investigations and that was when he made the acquaintance of a helpful...
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Seward
A family story related that AS
's grandfather John Hunter
, who became Samuel Johnson
's schoolmaster, had begun life as a foundling.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
2
Family and Intimate relationships
Hester Lynch Piozzi
In the days when Henry Thrale's sexual exploits were making newspaper columns, the same papers speculated pruriently on the relationship of his wife with Johnson
. When Piozzi came on the scene such speculation re-awoke...
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Heyrick
Her mother, born Elizabeth Cartwright
, was a remarkable woman. She became engaged to please her family, but her fiancé died. After this she visited London and stayed with the publisher Robert Dodsley
. While...
Family and Intimate relationships
Hannah More
Johnson
and Boswell
paid a visit to the school run by HM
's sisters in Bristol.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press.
4
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Eliza Bray
Ann Arrow Kempe
was described by her daughter as shy and tender, with a love of music. L. E. L.
remembered her as a charming, kind woman who admired poetry and demonstrated a sincere affection...
