Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Charlotte Smith
-
Standard Name: Smith, Charlotte
Birth Name: Charlotte Turner
Married Name: Charlotte Smith
CS
, poet and novelist of the later eighteenth century, continued her output especially of children's books, into the very early nineteenth century. She wrote her poems for pleasure, her remarkable, now edited letters for relief from the struggles of a difficult life, but her novels (she said) only by necessity.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
996
Many of the latter have foreign settings, not for mere exoticism but to further a political critique which takes a global view. All her writing was done at high speed: she found it hard or impossible to make her income cover the unremitting expenses of her large dependent family. A critic has recently pronounced that the best of [her] writings . . . should be recognised as among the greatest works of the period.
Barrell, John. “To Stir up the People”. London Review of Books, Vol.
Her next child, Mary, was baptised in Plymouth on 30 April 1762, and a son, William, on 13 February 1765. In all she had eight children, five daughters and three sons. All of the sons...
Friends, Associates
Robert Southey
Having early in his life admired writers like Mary Wollstonecraft
and Charlotte Smith
, he later numbered women writers such as Anna Eliza Bray
among his close friends.
Trainer, James, and Clara Reeve. “Introduction”. The Old English Baron, Oxford University Press, 1977.
xviii
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
(who was also a good friend to other women writers from around the British Isles: to...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Cobbold
EC
corresponded with members of the London scientific intelligentsia: Sir James Edward Smith
, first President of the Linnean Society
(who encouraged Charlotte Smith
to introduce botanical information into her novels, but proved singularly unhelpful...
Friends, Associates
William Cowper
Notable among Cowper's other friends were the Rev John Newton
(a former slave-trader who since his conversion had become a hellfire Evangelical preacher), Lady Austen
(who set him the writing task commemorated in the title...
Friends, Associates
Mary Tighe
Before she left London, MT
met there her fellow Irish poet Tom Moore
. He subsequently visited her in Dublin and complimented her in verse. She exchanged poems with Barbarina Wilmot (later Lady Dacre)
...
Friends, Associates
Eliza Fenwick
EF
was well known to many of the English radicals of the 1790s: besides those already mentioned, she knew Charlotte Smith
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
.
Paul, Lissa. Eliza Fenwick, Early Modern Feminist. University of Delaware Press, 2019.
72
A particularly close and lifelong friend was Mary Hays
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Loudon
The same year, 1840, JL
issued another book for children: The Young Naturalist's Journey: or the Travels of Agnes Merton with her Mama, a hybrid of entertainment and pedagogy in the style of Charlotte Smith
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Robinson
MR
's preface quotes that of Charlotte Smith
to her Elegiac Sonnets.
Robinson, Mary. “Introduction”. Mary Robinson: Selected Poems, edited by Judith Pascoe, Broadview, 2000, pp. 19-64.
45
She presents her own work as one of scholarship, explaining that by legitimate in her title she means the sonnet in...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Hays
Among the book's contents are poems and fiction (including dream visions and an Oriental tale. Titles like Cleora, or the Misery Attending Unsuitable Connections and Josepha, or pernicious Effects of early Indulgence foreground Hays's didactic...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emily Frederick Clark
Quotations heading chapters come from Milton
and other mostly modern poets, including Charlotte Smith
and Mary Robinson
. Other inset poems may be EFC
's own.
McLeod, Deborah. The Minerva Press. University of Alberta, 1997.
The story opens as Portuguese peasants encounter a fainting...
Intertextuality and Influence
Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho
, the patriotic heroism...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ann Radcliffe
The heroine, Adeline, is not merely a poet but also a genius. Her poems are interspersed in the narrative, which is the earliest example of the mature Radcliffe formula with the typical Radcliffe villain, Phillipe...
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
13 September 1759: A British party under James Wolfe climbed...
National or international item
13 September 1759
A British party under James Wolfe
climbed the Heights of Abraham at Quebec and beat the French in battle there.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Wharncliffe, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, first Baron, Richard Bentley, 1836, 3 vols.
3: 191
Newman, Gerald, editor. Britain in the Hanoverian Age, 1714-1837: An Encyclopedia. Garland, 1997.
778
1775: The first, posthumous, printing of Thomas...
Writing climate item
1775
The first, posthumous, printing of Thomas Gray
's sonnet on the death of Richard West
caused a literary sensation; it laid the foundation for Charlotte Smith
's Elegiac Sonnets, 1784, and the revival of the sonnet form.
Curran, Stuart. “Reading with Both Hands: The Dialog of Novelist and Poet”. American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Conference, Boston, MA, 27 Mar. 2004.
1780: James Harrison (hitherto chiefly known as...
Writing climate item
1780
James Harrison
(hitherto chiefly known as a music publisher) began to issue the handsomely-produced Novelists' Magazine, a weekly serial reprinting of canonical novels.
Shevlin, Elinor. “’It is the intention of the Editor’: Griffith’s, Harrison’s, and Cooke’s collections and the making of the English novel”. American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Conference, New Orleans, LA, 21 Apr. 2001.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Fleeman, John David, and James McLaverty. A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Clarendon Press, 2000, 2 vols.
2: 1023
April 1789: The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward's...
Women writers item
April 1789
The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward
's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
59 (1789): 292
By June 1789: William Lisle Bowles published Fourteen Sonnets,...
Writing climate item
By June 1789
William Lisle Bowles
published Fourteen Sonnets, Elegiac and Descriptive, Written during a Tour.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
67 (1789): 504
2 September 1793: Henrietta O'Neill, Irish writer and patron,...
Women writers item
2 September 1793
Henrietta O'Neill
, Irish writer and patron, died. She had opened a private theatre at her seat, Shane's Castle in County Antrim, and also supported the theatre in Belfast.
Crossley-Seymour, Aaron, and Charlotte Brooke. “A Memoir of Miss Brooke”. Reliques of Irish Poetry, J. Christie, 1816, p. 1: iii - cxxviii.
lxix note
By June 1796: Samuel Taylor Coleridge compiled a booklet...
By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...
Women writers item
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford
published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2nd ser. 20 (1797): 470
December 1802: The Critical Review extolled the quality...
Women writers item
December 1802
The Critical Review extolled the quality of contemporary women's poetry: Miss Seward
, Mrs Barbauld
, Charlotte Smith
, will take their place among the English poets for centuries to come.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2nd ser. 36 (1802): 413
1804: The publisher George, George, and John Robinson,...
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press, 1997.
93 n1
1825: Alexander Dyce, then a twenty-seven-year-old...
Women writers item
1825
Alexander Dyce
, then a twenty-seven-year-old reluctant clergyman, published his Specimens of British Poetesses, a project in rediscovering women's literary history.
Eger, Elizabeth. “Fashioning a Female Canon: Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and the Politics of the Anthology”. Women’s Poetry in the Enlightenment, The Making of a Canon 1730-1820, edited by Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain, St Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 201-15.
210-11
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: 81
Salzman, Paul. “How Alexander Dyce Assembled Specimens of British Poetesses: A Key Moment in the Transmission of Early Modern Women’s Writing”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
26
, No. 1, Feb. 2019, pp. 88-105.
88-9, 91, 95-6, 97, 98, 101
Texts
Smith, Charlotte. A Narrative of the Loss of the Catharine, Venus, and Piedmont Transports. 1st ed., Sampson Low, 1796.
Smith, Charlotte. Beachy Head. 1st ed., Joseph Johnson, 1807.
Smith, Charlotte. Celestina. 1st ed., T. Cadell, 1791, 4 vols.
Smith, Charlotte. Emmeline. 1st ed., T. Cadell, 1788, 4 vols.
Smith, Charlotte. Emmeline. Editor Ehrenpreis, Anne Henry, Oxford University Press, 1971.
Smith, Charlotte. Ethelinde. 1st ed., T. Cadell, 1789, 5 vols.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. The Old Manor House, edited by Anne Henry Ehrenpreis, Oxford University Press, 1969, p. v - xxx.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle, edited by Anne Henry Ehrenpreis, Oxford University Press, 1971.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. Elegiac Sonnets 1789, edited by Jonathan Wordsworth, Woodstock Books, 1992.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. The Poems of Charlotte Smith, edited by Stuart Curran, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. xix - xxix.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith, edited by Judith Phillips Stanton, Indiana University Press, 2003, p. i - xlv.
Smith, Charlotte. “Introduction”. The Works of Charlotte Smith, edited by Michael Garner et al., Pickering and Chatto, 2005, p. xxix - xxxvii.
Smith, Charlotte. Letters of a Solitary Wanderer. 1st ed., Sampson Low, 1799, 2 vols.