Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sir Walter Scott
-
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.
Sarah Harriet Burney
was clearly more impressed by what she regarded as a popular, even a trashy novel, than she was willing to admit. She called it (in implicit contrast with Walter Scott
) a...
Education
Lydia Maria Child
At fifteen she read Paradise Lost (with her brother's encouragement) and was delighted with its grandeur and sublimity, but was bold enough to criticise Milton
for assert[ing] the superiority of his own sex in rather...
Textual Production
Lydia Maria Child
The story of her researching this book at the Boston Athenæum
is not quite accurate, since few of her borrowings from that institution were on the topic of slavery.
Clifford, Deborah Pickman. Crusader for Freedom. Beacon Press.
99
Her preface declares that a...
Education
Kate Chopin
Following her father's death, her education was supplemented by her maternal great-grandmother Victoire Verdon Charleville
, who placed a particular emphasis on French and music.The young Kate O'Flaherty was also a voracious reader, and enjoyed...
Reception
Emily Frederick Clark
From EFC
's letters to the Royal Literary Fund
it would seem that she entertained a very modest estimate of her own talents. Late in her career, for example, she calls her own works very...
Family and Intimate relationships
Alison Cockburn
AC
was both a cousin, through her mother, and a great-aunt, through one of her sisters, of Walter Scott
. First meeting him when she was in her sixties and he was not yet six...
Residence
Alison Cockburn
As a widow living in EdinburghAC
was, according to Sarah Tytler
and Jean L. Watson
, a lively cultural influence, serving as a connecting-link between the Edinburgh of Allan Ramsay
and Burns
, and...
Friends, Associates
Alison Cockburn
She wrote that some of my most steady friends thro' Life were my childhood companions, girls she had been at school with.
Cockburn, Alison. Letters and Memoirs. Editor Craig-Brown, Thomas, David Douglas.
2
Besides Ramsay (whom, too, she had known since her girlhood), Burns
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
Education
Clara Codd
CC
never went to school; instead, she and her sisters were taught by a series of governesses who she never loved.
Codd, Clara. So Rich a Life. Caxton Limited.
6
Her education was not particularly religious: she was not exposed to Bible...
Education
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
MEC
was educated at home. She read widely during her childhood, including works by Shakespeare
and Malory
. She studied poetry, history and drawing. Saturday afternoons were spent with friends, acting scenes from Scott
's...
Looking back on her early education, MC
wrote I managed to develop into a curiously determined independent little personality, with ideas and opinions more suited to some clever young man. . . . I instinctively...
Intertextuality and Influence
Louisa Stuart Costello
Through her work on early French poetry LSC
became a friend of Sir Walter Scott
, who caused her to devote herself entirely to literature.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Both the original Dictionary of National Biography and its successor...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Cuthbertson
Walter Scott
was hunting for a copy of this book in about 1813, calling it a now-forgotten novel;
Garside, Peter. “Walter Scott and the ’Common’ Novel, 1808-1819”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, Vol.
3
.
critic Peter Garside suspects that it exercised some influence on his Guy Mannering. Garside
calls...
