Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Eliza Lynn Linton
-
Standard Name: Linton, Eliza Lynn
Birth Name: Elizabeth Lynn
Married Name: Elizabeth Linton
Indexed Name: Mrs Lynn Linton
Indexed Name: E. Lynn Linton
ELL
was a Victorian novelist and memoirist whose historical importance rests largely on her pioneering role as a professional journalist who blazed a trail for her sex. She both held and promoted radical views early in life. Nevertheless, as is well known, many of her 200 periodical contributions are antifeminist essays which celebrate traditional women in traditional roles, and ridicule attempts at new departures for women as either a fad or a sham.
In a preface to the volume Alcott declares that her heroine, Polly, is not intended as a perfect model, but as a possible improvement upon [Eliza Lynn Linton
's] Girl of the Period, who...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mrs Alexander
MA
's circle of literary friends in London were influential in the publication of Billeted in Boulogne. Anna Maria Hall
, her countrywoman, introduced MA
to W. H. Wills
, the editor of Household...
Intertextuality and Influence
Rhoda Broughton
The central characters, critical Paul Le Mesurier and spoiled, outspoken Lenore Herrick, fall in love early on, but the novel's later volumes depict the collapse of their relationship brought about by Lenore's pride and Paul's...
Who Was Who in Literature, 1906-1934. Gale Research, 1979, 2 vols.
vol. 1
She also belonged to the Society of Authors
, and acted as a steward (along with over a hundred other luminaries including Walter Besant
Literary responses
Rhoda Broughton
Eliza Lynn Linton
, in an article that was in general highly complimentary, defended RB
's characterisation of Lenore: She is irritating and faulty, but not corrupt. Her temper and her taste are both equally...
Literary responses
Sarah Grand
The Review of Reviews perhaps disingenuously took SG
's acknowledgement of faults in The Modern Girl to mean that she deplored the emergence of this type: Mrs. Lynn Linton
will chortle for joy when she...
Literary responses
Mary Russell Mitford
John Kenyon
wrote in 1833 to tell MRM
of the delight taken by himself and his brother in her tolerant and humanizing pen.
qtd. in
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
2: 145
Her reputation as a financially successful author brought her unwelcome...
Literary responses
Rhoda Broughton
RB
was convinced that Nancy would be a failure (and threatened in that case to stop writing), as she told Richard Bentley
in a letter bemoaning a negative review in Pall Mall.
Sadleir, Michael. Things Past. Constable, 1944.
106
It...
Literary responses
Frances Trollope
Mary Russell Mitford
spoke for the more conventional side of early nineteenth-century opinion when she wrote that in spite of her terrible coarseness, [she] has certainly done two or three marvelously clever things.
qtd. in
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
2: 316
Literary responses
Rhoda Broughton
The Athenæum, describing Belinda as RB
's worst novel, noted a similarity of her central couple to Dorothea and Casaubon in George Eliot
's Middlemarch. It deemed Eliot's characterisation decidedly superior, maintaning that...
Literary responses
Rhoda Broughton
An article by Eliza Lynn Linton
written in June 1887 (well after the ebbing of RB
's early, scandalous reputation) judged that her books were always essentially love-stories, and nothing else,
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “Miss Broughton’s Novels”. Temple Bar, Vol.
80
, June 1887, pp. 196-09.
203
but that without...
Literary responses
Agnes Strickland
Lives of the Queens of England was frequently reprinted with additions and revisions; the 1852 edition, regarded as definitive, was reprinted in 1972 with an introduction by the Stricklands' fellow-biographer Antonia Fraser
. Fraser
's...
Literary responses
Regina Maria Roche
The British Critic (in the only review received by The Children of the Abbey)
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
judged it to be entertaining and well-written. It felt the well-drawn character of Adela to be somewhat too romantic, but...
Literary responses
Ann Radcliffe
Anna Seward
, in letters which were to be published in AR
's lifetime, mixed her praise of her gothic oeuvre with some trenchant criticism.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press, 1999.
Reviewers praised this novel for its depiction of character and its intimate knowledge of the human heart.The Monthly Magazine singled out its impeccable morality, suitable for a young and female readership.
qtd. in
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
