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.
IB
was the author of the classic book of household management which became a standard reference work for generations following her death—probably, says critic Michael Mason
, less common only than the Bible, Shakespeare and...
Literary responses
Mary Matilda Betham
Charles Lamb
pronounced MMB
's poem (before publication) to be very delicately pretty as to sentiment,
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
To educate herself further, she read widely, setting herself literary exercises, writing verse imitating or dramatising Chaucer
, Spenser
, and Browning
. However, she writes that at that time, I had read no really...
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
Friends, Associates
Mary Boyle
MB
noted in her reminiscences that she had been on terms of close and tender friendship with many great men.
Boyle, Mary. Mary Boyle. Her Book. Editor Boyle, Sir Courtenay Edmund, E. P. Dutton; John Murray.
xxiii
Her correspondence with some of them has since been published. She called G. P. R. James
Education
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Mary Elizabeth read early and voraciously, polishing off Anna Maria Hall
's three-volume Marian when she was only seven. By nine she was reading Scott
and Dickens
. One of the family servants introduced her...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
MEB
was encouraged to write from an early age, particularly by her mother. She would later recall how when she was eight and had just learned to write, her godfather bought her a beautiful brand...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
MEB
's Hostages to Fortune, also published in 1875, gives a more sustained view of the theatre milieu than did A Strange World. It tells the story of Herman Westray's struggle to succeed...
Later in life, she was sometimes referred to as the female Walter Scott.
Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, editors. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Garland.
In his History of the English Novel, Ernest Baker
dubbed her a modest imitator of Scott.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 50
Education
Emily Brontë
Thereafter, Patrick Brontë
educated his remaining children at home, using standard educational texts including Thomas Salmon
's A New Geographical and Historical Grammar, a condensed version of Oliver Goldsmith
's History of England,...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emily Brontë
Fannie E. Ratchford
describes the Gondal that emerges from EB
's poems as a mountainous lake-dotted land inhabited by an Ossian-like race who loved and hated passionately, warred mysteriously, and died heroically.
Brontë, Emily. “Introduction”. Gondal’s Queen, edited by Fannie E. Ratchford, University of Texas Press, pp. 11-38.
17
The...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emily Brontë
EB
's composition of her sole surviving novel, Wuthering Heights, flowed directly from her Gondal writings and shows much greater continuity with them than her sisters' fiction does. Like theirs, the novel reveals the...
Literary responses
Rhoda Broughton
The Times marked RB
's death with an editorial asserting her permanent value as a novelist,
Times. Times Publishing Company.
(7 June 1920): 13
as well as with an obituary. The former commented that Broughton had made a sound...