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.
FB
's blindness meant that she did not have a formal education, and she very early felt the want of it.
Browne, Frances. The Star of Attéghéi; the Vision of Schwartz; and Other Poems. Edward Moxon.
ix
From the age of seven, when she heard a sermon she did not...
Textual Production
Mary Brunton
She had nearly finished that part of the novel set in Scotland when in July that year Walter Scott
published Waverley. At first she thought she had better cancel her own Scottish scenes, but...
Health
Mary Bryan
MB
(now Bedingfield) sent an anguished appeal to Scott
for an actual gift of money—fifteen pounds—to enable her to see a London specialist about her sight.
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
Textual Production
Mary Bryan
Letters exchanged between MB
and Sir Walter Scott
survive for these years; the correspondence, however, may not have ended in 1827.
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
Textual Production
Mary Bryan
MB
sent Scott
, in a letter, a poem entitled The Village Maid.
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
Textual Production
Mary Bryan
MB
(now Bedingfield) accompanied her last surviving letter to Scott
with a poem entitled Return my Muse, which laments her final decline into blindness.
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
Occupation
Mary Bryan
Though literary historian Mary Waldron
says that MB
took on the running of the business herself,
Waldron, Mary. Letter about Mary Bryan to Isobel Grundy.
Bryan later told her prospective patron, Sir Walter Scott
, that her father took on its management for her...
Friends, Associates
Mary Bryan
MB
approached Sir Walter Scott
on 10 June 1818, seeking the furtherance of her literary career. The extant correspondence spans nine years. His side does not survive, and there is no evidence that they ever...
Reception
Mary Bryan
The Critical Review gave a couple of paragraphs to the collection, praising its soft and genuine sadness, the easy and unpremeditated . . . singularly graceful language, and the refined, enthusiastic, and cultivated mind
Ragaz, Sharon. “Writing to Sir Walter: The Letters of Mary Bryan Bedingfield”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, No. 7.
there...
Textual Production
Mary Bryan
MB
mentions in 1815 another work which she abandoned unfinished, on the grounds that some unnamed individuals might have had their feelings wounded by it.
Bryan, Mary, and Jonathan Wordsworth. Sonnets and Metrical Tales 1815. Woodstock Books.
99n
Soon afterwards, in 1818, she sent Sir Walter Scott
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Bryan
Sir Walter Scott
had encouraged her from poetry into novel-writing. Unless the condition of her eyes improved miraculously during the sixteen months before publication, she must have composed by dictating to an amanuensis. Copies of...
Textual Features
Mary Bryan
MB
's preface repeats an opinion she had already voiced in letters to Scott
: that the dominance of his novels had narrowed the opportunities for others. Its village setting, in and around Sidmouth on...
Textual Production
John Buchan
His later biographies include Sir Walter Scott, 1932, and Oliver Cromwell, 1934. His later essay collections include A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys, 1922 (which relates among other things the story...
Education
Pearl S. Buck
Mr Kung despised fiction and the Sydenstricker library contained only the supposedly factual Plutarch
's Lives and Foxe
's Book of Martyrs, but Pearl read fiction avidly in both Chinese and English, devouring Shakespeare
Education
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Her next school was the Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentlemen (a school that counted its pupils in single figures and was run by a trio of very young sisters). Frances was good at...
