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 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...
Publishing
Catherine Talbot
CT
contributed to number 30 of Samuel Johnson
's The Rambler, a letter from Sunday.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
214
Fairer, David. “Authorship Problems in <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>The Adventurer</span>”;. Review of English Studies, Vol.
n.s. 25
, No. 98, pp. 137-51.
143
Friends, Associates
Catherine Talbot
Six months later CT
was staying with the duchess on an extended visit. She was also a good friend of Elizabeth Montagu
(of whose closeness to Carter she was sometimes jealous); of Montagu's friends George Lyttelton
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Talbot
This essay, an answer to number 11, which had taken the form of a letter from To-day, displays CT
's characteristic whimsical ingenuity. Night, claiming to be the elder sister of Today, defends dark...
Textual Features
Catherine Talbot
CT
's letters often convey her literary opinions, discussing writing by, for instance, Marie de Sévigné
, Richardson
, Henry Fielding
and Samuel Johnson
. She also writes of the details of her daily life...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Here, more directly than in her novels, she deals with political and social issues: double tithing (Catholics having to support the established church which they did not frequent), corrupt middle-men, and absentee landlords.
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora.
Cokayne, George Edward. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. Editor Gibbs, Vicary, St Catherine Press.
In opening and closing she invokes Samuel Johnson
(a travel writer more interested in the...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Steele
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...
Education
Mary Somerville
Flipping casually through a ladies' fashion magazine when she was about fourteen years old, Mary had her curiosity caught by an algebraic expression in a puzzle. She was told that the variables were Algebra...
Intertextuality and Influence
Edith Somerville
The diary (in the possession of ES
's Coghill relations) is a wonderfully vivid and engaging text, from youth to old age. It delights in anecdote and comicality, but touches the heart with its stark...
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte Smith
A preface (in the first volume) quotes the words of Samuel Johnson
(with apology for applying them to so trifling a matter as novel-writing) about working at his dictionary amid grief and illness, feeling cut...
The novel in its first form was hugely successful: it brought FS
instant fame. Johnson
teasingly expressed doubts about her moral right to make your readers suffer so much.
Sheridan, Frances. “Introduction”. Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, edited by Jean Coates Cleary et al., World’s Classics, Oxford University Press.
ES
received her first education at home, from her sisters Ethel, Bertha, and Mabel (the eldest), who taught the younger ones Bible stories on Sundays. At the same time she imbibed from her brothers the...