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.
Again the Analytical reviewer may have been Wollstonecraft
, and if so she was better pleased than before: another novel, written with her usual flow of language and happy discrimination of manners. . ....
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Holford
Margaret Holford the younger
scored her greatest success with her anonymous: Wallace
, or, The Fight of Falkirk, a historical verse romance inspired by Walter Scott
's Marmion, 1808.
Both in an Address to the Editor and in a series of explanatory footnotes, AO
positions herself on the one hand as a historian with a proper regard for available evidence, and on the other...
Intertextuality and Influence
Harriet Smythies
In a critical preface HS
reveals her gender though not her name. She opens by invoking the author of Rienzi (either, Mary Russell Mitford
or Edward Bulwer Lytton
). The two groups of lovers and...
Its title-page quotes from Akenside
, but the tutelary genius of the novel is Shakespeare
, several of whose plays have left their mark on it. The story opens (recalling two of Mrs Ross
's...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Maria Grey
The Duke makes its moral point with a quotation from Sir Walter Scott
on the title-page: Oh woman! in our hours of ease, / Uncertain, coy, and hard to please . . . . When...
Intertextuality and Influence
Marjorie Bowen
MB
recalls being influenced at an early age by her enjoyment of Tennyson
's Idylls of the King, Wilde
's Picture of Dorian Gray, the novels of Sir Walter Scott
, and Richardson
Intertextuality and Influence
Grace Aguilar
The central character is the undowered girl Florence Leslie—so called because of her birth in Italy—whose high-minded principles have been fuelled by indiscriminate
Aguilar, Grace. Woman’s Friendship. D. Appleton and Company.
13
reading in history, poetry, and romance at an early age...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
The title-page quotes Burns
and Scott
. The preface remarks that books based on female impressions of national manners and moral character have succeeded in the past.
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Sketches of the Present Manners, Customs, and Scenery of Scotland. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
prelims iv
The book is again made up...
Leisure and Society
Eliza Lynn Linton
In London, Eliza Lynn drank in artistic life. She championed the singing of Jenny Lind
against those who preferred Alboni or Malibran. She performed for Samuel Laurence
the role of uninformed art critic or foolometer...
Leisure and Society
Janet Little
A near-contemporary note tucked into a copy of JL
's poetical works describes her this way: she was a person above the usual size and as one said to me very graphically who knew her,...
Leisure and Society
Queen Victoria
Among her favourite writers were Alfred Tennyson
, Sir Walter Scott
, George Eliot
(whose The Mill on the Floss made a deep impression
Victoria, Queen. Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals. Editor Hibbert, Christopher, Penguin.
Once an omnivorous reader, HM
restricted her choice of books in later life, in line with her religious convictions. She delighted in William Cowper
as a poet whom I can read on Sunday.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press.
90
From...
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...
