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.
For SN
, writing began as an act of rebellion. She wrote her first poem at the age of eleven when she became frustrated with an algebra problem, and thereupon decided to become a poet....
Textual Production
Jackie Kay
JK
was one of twenty Scottish authors invited to contribute a monologue to a collaborative work entitled Dear Scotland, which was first performed by the Scottish National Theatre
on 24 April 2014 as a...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Susanna Watts
This includes poems on Elizabeth Heyrick
, William Cowper
, and Sir Walter Scott
, A Prayer: for the Slaves, Delicacy: Inscribed to the Ladies, several of natural description, and yet others on...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Margaret Emily Shore
The diary provides a full and vivid account of girlhood in the years leading up to Victoria
's reign, in addition to musings on familial and personal topics. It contains substantial literary criticism, such as...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Green
M. G. Lewis
is a more complicated case, treated with some nuance. SG
admires The Monk but feels that after that Lewis's real talent was obscured by the baneful influence of German fiction: she agrees...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Pipe Wolferstan
Here she expounds her method of teaching her grandchildren [or step-grandchildren] through play, and features acute critical comment on female writers for children. In particular, she makes detailed, intelligent criticism of Maria Edgeworth
's children's...
Travel
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
Her more northerly Scottish journey took her in summer 1816 from the painfully Scottish-associated Flodden Field in Northumberland (no doubt with Scott
's Marmion in mind) to further informative sojourns in Edinburgh and Glasgow...
Travel
Maria Jane Jewsbury
MJJ
travelled to Edinburgh, where she met Walter Scott
.
Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell.
28
Travel
Maria Edgeworth
ME
spent two weeks at Abbotsford in Melrose with Sir Walter Scott
and his family.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Clarendon.
418
Travel
Maria Edgeworth
ME
(with all her writing about Ireland long behind her) visited Killarney in County Kerry with Sir Walter Scott
and J. G. Lockhart
.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Clarendon.
FH
took the first of two trips to Scotland, where she made a visit like an old familiar friend
Hughes, Harriet Browne Owen, and Felicia Hemans. “Memoir of Mrs. Hemans”. The Works of Mrs. Hemans, W. Blackwood, pp. 1-315.
180
with Sir Walter Scott
. She also met Francis Jeffrey
, who significantly shaped...
Travel
Cecil Frances Alexander
During her youth, the future CFA
traveled to Edinburgh where she met Sir Walter Scott
, and watched the famous Scottish landscape painter, Rev. John Thomson
, brother to her uncle Thomas Thomson
, at...
Wealth and Poverty
Anne Grant
Sir Walter Scott
, predicting on her first refusal that she would later eat her words, observed sharply that she was as proud as a Highland woman, vain as a poetess, and absurd as a...