Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane Austen
-
Standard Name: Austen, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Austen
Pseudonym: A Lady
Styled: Mrs Ashton Dennis
JA
's unequalled reputation has led academic canon-makers to set her on a pedestal and scholars of early women's writing to use her as an epoch. For generations she was the first—or the only—woman to be adjudged major. Recent attention has shifted: her balance, good sense, and humour are more taken for granted, and critics have been scanning her six mature novels for traces of the boldness and irreverence which mark her juvenilia. Her two unfinished novels, her letters (which some consider an important literary text in themselves), and her poems and prayers have also received some attention.
Henry James
's review in 1865 considered Braddon's success alongside that of Collins
, pronouncing her the founder of the sensation novel (defined as devising domestic mysteries adapted to the wants of a sternly prosaic...
Literary responses
Anne Mozley
George Eliot
not only praised this review in a letter, but also instructed her publisher to send a copy of her next novel, The Mill on the Floss, to Bentley's
expressly so that it...
Literary responses
Harriette Wilson
Admiration of HW
as a writer united historian Eric Hobsbawm
and editor Karl Miller
. Miller judged the memoirs a well-written serious work, as much a work of social history, a study of class and...
Literary responses
Rachel Hunter
This novel was the second of RH
's to be affectionately mocked by Jane Austen
. Austen sent her niece the future Anna Lefroy
a letter purportedly for delivery to RH
herself, in the formal...
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
This novel made the best-seller list the month after publication; but at the end of the year it received the Bookseller's Glass Slipper award for books whose sales had not reflected their quality. Reviewers...
Literary responses
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
SFG
's importance to the influential Mary Wollstonecraft
can be gauged from the way that Wollstonecraft used and built on her writings, recommended them, measured others by their standard, and also did not hesitate to...
Literary responses
Frances Trollope
FT
's rambunctious widow was greatly admired by both her male and female readership. Even the Athenæum, which was usually unsupportive of her work, offered a positive review: [s]o frequently has it been our...
Literary responses
Elizabeth von Arnim
The Benefactress received positive reviews in the US and England. A number of critics likened the author to Jane Austen
, while The Examiner referred to her as the Unknown Genius. The Daily Mail...
Literary responses
Anne Brontë
Like the first, this second reviewer (probably H. F. Chorley
) found Agnes Grey both less objectionable and less powerful than Wuthering Heights.
Allott, Miriam, editor. The Brontës. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
217-9
Many reviews concentrated wholly or solely on Emily's novel. The...
Literary responses
Barbara Hofland
Mary Russell Mitford
wrote to BH
, You are the mistress of our tears, as Miss Austen
is of our smiles, and I think you have the advantage.
Butts, Dennis. Mistress of our Tears, A Literary and Bibliographical Study of Barbara Hofland. Scolar Press.
19
Apart from somewhat overvaluing Hofland, this...
Literary responses
Sarah Harriet Burney
Charles Burney
, too, slighted his youngest daughter's work in comparison with the elder's.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. “Editor’s Introduction”. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, edited by Lorna J. Clark, Georgia University Press.
lxii
Jane Austen
later noted that Clarentine seemed good on the first reading, not so good on the second, and unnatural...
Literary responses
Violet Hunt
VH
's associate Rebecca West
had strong praise for Their Lives. In a review in the Daily News on 7 March 1917, she called it a work of art. She found in it a...
Literary responses
Jane Taylor
Critic Stuart Curran
calls this volume brilliant. He notes the resemblance of its fine irony
Curran, Stuart. “The I Altered”. Romanticism and Feminism, edited by Anne K. Mellor, Indiana University Press, pp. 185-07.
192
to that of Jane Austen
(despite the fundamental earnestness of Taylor's Dissenting attitudes). Presenting those attitudes as a crucial...
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Elizabeth Bowen
, in her laudatory review, likened the icy sharpness of ICB
's dialogue to the sound of glass being swept up one of these London mornings after a blitz.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
AR
's rival M. G. Lewis
finished reading Udolpho within ten days of its publication, though he had during the same time travelled from England to the Hague.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press.
