Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sir Walter Scott
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Standard Name: Scott, Sir Walter
Birth Name: Walter Scott
Titled: Sir Walter Scott
Nickname: The Great Unknown
Used Form: author of Kenilworth
The remarkable career of Walter Scott
began with a period as a Romantic poet (the leading Romantic poet in terms of popularity) before he went on to achieve even greater popularity as a novelist, particularly for his historical fiction and Scottish national tales. His well-earned fame in both these genres of fiction has tended to create the impression that he originated them, whereas in fact women novelists had preceded him in each.
T he Critical, warming to the Taylors' work, said the authors of this little book had a better claim to the name of poet than many of higher pretensions.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
3d ser. 8 (1806) : 440
Literary responses
Elizabeth Siddal
In the most sustained consideration of the literary material, Constance Hassett
argues that what has been read as autobiographical is on the contrary a typically Victorian tonality.
Hassett, Constance W. “Elizabeth Siddal’s Poetry: A Problem and Some Suggestions”. Victorian Poetry, Vol.
35
, No. 4, pp. 443-70.
Hassett pursues the theme of muteness in...
Literary responses
Margaret Holford
She was very disappointed when Scott never acknowledged this tribute. After Wallace appeared, Joanna Baillie
wrote to him reminding him of this lapse in manners and implicitly that it was his own fault that Wallace...
Literary responses
Jemima Tautphoeus
The novel was very popular in both England and Bavaria. The general view was that there is no novel . . . in which the epithet charming could be applied with more strict propriety...
Literary responses
Catherine Fanshawe
CF
's immediately posthumous reputation rested, like her writings themselves, on oral tradition. She had the admiration of William Cowper
and Walter Scott
, as well as Joanna Baillie
, Anne Grant
, and Mary Berry
Literary responses
Jane Porter
The notice in the Critical Review began by using this novel as a peg for a defence of good novels in general, especially, apparently, those dealing with national histories. The existence of many incompetent novelists...
Literary responses
Alison Cockburn
Burns
reflected the influence of Cockburn's I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling in one of his earliest compositions, I dream'd I lay where flowers were springing (first published in 1788).
Fordonski, Krzysztof. “Robert Burns and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski: A Translatological Investigation into the Mystery of ’I dream’d I lay’”. Scottish Literary Review, Vol.
5
, No. 1, pp. 13-29.
16, 26
Walter Scott
Literary responses
Margaret Holford
Walter Scott
never answered when Holford sent him a copy of Wallace for comment, and was apparently scathing about the poem in remarks made privately to Joanna Baillie.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
George Saintsbury
found the title ridiculous and the novel worthy of the title. He blamed it for blocks of spiritless and commonplace historic narrative, and for such anachronisms the gentle and elegant heroine being educated...
Literary responses
Beatrice Harraden
Marie Belloc Lowndes
described this book for the Times Literary Supplement as a strangely poignant drama and likened it to Mary Shelley
's Frankenstein and Sir Walter Scott
's Waverley for its comparable ability to...
Literary responses
Margaret Holford
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
praised this poem in print not long after its appearance (though she conceded that its view of Wallace was not so accurate as that of Jane Porter
's almost contemporaneous rendering in...
Literary responses
Christian Isobel Johnstone
Scott
gave this novel qualified praise. He seemed to see it in the light of a legitimate competitor but not a serious rival. Read Elizth. de Bruce—it is very clever but does not show...
Literary responses
Jane West
Unlike JW
's two previous works, this one was reviewed in the Quarterly Magazine and elsewhere.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
2: 373
David Thame
believes that this and West's next novel represent a substantial change of register from gossiping...
Literary responses
Joanna Baillie
When Baillie re-read her own Witchcraft as a work in progress she wrote: I am inclined to think well of it. Renfrew witches upon a polite stage! Will such a thing ever be endorsed!
Witchcraft by Joanna Baillie. Finborough Theatre.
The...
Literary responses
Eliza Haywood
The Monthly Review found the heroine of this book more interesting than Betsy Thoughtless (with better character-drawing but a continued deficiency in plot and sentiments. It conceded that the whole was doubtless much superior to...
