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.
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.
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.
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, p. vii - viii; various pages.
Her publisher, Dilly
, paid her £10 for the copyright.
Trainer, James, and Clara Reeve. “Introduction”. The Old English Baron, Oxford University Press.
xii
In CR
's exaggeratedly humble preface she acknowledges her work to be the literary offspring of the Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
—whom...
Textual Production
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
took a keen interest in the reputations of women writers. She planned in 1821 to write an essay on Miss Austen
's novels, which are by no means valued as they deserve
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.
1: 357
Textual Production
Mary Wollstonecraft
The periodical was launched in May. MW
's first major review came in July, of Charlotte Smith
's Emmeline.
Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. Macmillan.
81
She later assumed the duties of editor; the Analytical Review became one of her...
Textual Production
Mary Julia Young
The poem is dedicated by their sincere admirer, the author, to those, whose dramatic excellence suggested it.
Young, Mary Julia. Genius and Fancy; or, Dramatic Sketches. H. D. Symonds and J. Gray.
1792, prelims
MJY
did not claim it with her name until its re-issue with other poems in 1795...
Textual Production
Mary Hays
It was MH
who finished Charlotte Smith
's History of England, published in 1806: Smith, in deteriorating health, had written to her about this project in July 1800. Hays added the third volume, taking...
Textual Features
Anna Letitia Barbauld
The series has a general introduction, On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing, and a Preface, Biographical and Critical for each novelist, which in its echo of the full and original title of Johnson's...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB
writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld
for praising Elizabeth Rowe
. She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington
is the real author of...
Textual Features
Anne Damer
With many suitors, Louisa would like permission to stay single, but she has a project for the conversion to Christianity of Mr Stanville, whom eventually she marries. (The similarity of this name to Stainville in...
Textual Features
Sarah Trimmer
In addition to Catharine Cappe
's work on Sunday schools and versions of fairy stories by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy
, the magazine reviewed work by a whole library of didactic, pedagogical, or improving writers, reprinted as...
Textual Features
Jane Warton
It seems that at least JW
's brother Joseph (whose published critique of Pope's poetry helped reshape literary opinion) was open to influence from her critical judgement; this raises at least the possibility that some...
Textual Features
Helena Wells
HW
says she has more respect for the upper classes than some of our modern reformists.
Wells, Helena. Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females. L. Peacock; W. Creech.
7
She recommends reading poetry and history, not novels: Novel reading tends to enervate the mind. We rise from...
Textual Features
Ann Gomersall
AG
is remarkable not only for extending the novel's range out of the gentry into the mercantile class, but also in differentiating between various types of businessmen, more and less admirable, and various different attitudes...
It opens with the title-poem of about 650 lines, The Old Manor House, which tells the tragic story of two young lovers, Guy and Margaret, who are kept apart because of the impossible circumstances...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Smith, Charlotte. The Banished Man. T. Cadell, Jr. and W. Davies, 1794.
Smith, Charlotte. The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith. Editor Stanton, Judith Phillips, Indiana University Press, 2003.
Smith, Charlotte. The Emigrants. T. Cadell, 1793.
Smith, Charlotte, and Mary Hays. The History of England. Richard Phillips, 1806.
Smith, Charlotte. The Natural History of Birds. J. Johnson, 1807.
Smith, Charlotte. The Old Manor House. J. Bell, 1793.
Smith, Charlotte. The Poems of Charlotte Smith. Editor Curran, Stuart, Oxford University Press, 1993.
Gayot de Pitaval, François. The Romance of Real Life. Translator Smith, Charlotte, T. Cadell, 1787.
Smith, Charlotte. The Wanderings of Warwick. J. Bell, 1794.
Smith, Charlotte. The Young Philosopher. T. Cadell, Jr. and W. Davies, 1798.
Smith, Charlotte. The Young Philosopher. Editor Kraft, Elizabeth, University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
Smith, Charlotte. What Is She?. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799.
